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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25604029">Sweet Seduction on the Silver Screen</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistermichael/pseuds/sistermichael'>sistermichael</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The One Where the Crew Has a Betting Pool [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>What We Do in the Shadows (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Camera Two has a conflict of interest, Coney Island, M/M, POV Outsider, Pining, Post-Season/Series 02, QPOC, Recreational Drug Use, Sex Magic, Virginity is a Social Construct, What happens in Barbados doesn't necessarily stay in Barbados, brooklyn brooklyn take me in, denial is a river in egypt, mild BDSM (offscreen), mild kink (offscreen), religious musings, return of the betting pool</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:48:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>18,568</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25604029</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistermichael/pseuds/sistermichael</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Summer is fast approaching New York. The vampire docuseries has been put on hold indefinitely and life seems to have returned to normal for the crew--until Camera Two finds himself hosting a certain nighttime visitor.</p><p>Part Two of <i>The One Where the Crew Has a Betting Pool</i> dives off the edge of canon and lands rather ungracefully amid hipster beer, sex magic, and an oddly-woke North Jersey merman.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Guillermo de la Cruz/Camera Two, Guillermo de la Cruz/Nandor the Relentless, Guillermo de la Cruz/Original Character(s), Nandor the Relentless/George Washington</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The One Where the Crew Has a Betting Pool [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1825135</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>72</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>With thanks as always to the Nandermo discord for inspiration, cheerleading and general perversion. <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingEverReallyEnds">NothingEverReallyEnds </a>did a truly heroic beta-read on this one; all mistakes, however, remain my own.</p><p>I've so enjoyed reading everyone's brilliant comments on this series. You folks are all sorts of awesome. I can be found on tumblr @sistersasquatch.</p><p>(Title is from Felix da Housecat’s “Silver Screen (Shower Scene).”)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s a windy spring day in Brooklyn. The awning of the kebab place downstairs is beginning to thrash wildly in the gale, the air smells like incipient rain and warm pavement, and there are scary-looking, bruise-green clouds rolling in overhead. Cecil keeps checking them nervously from his precarious position on the fire escape. The plants he keeps out there have all died (yet again) and he’s in the process of shoving them back into his apartment via the window for later discreet disposal in the dumpster. He’s chucked five out of the seven back inside when a familiar voice from the street below stops him in his tracks. </p><p>“Cecil!”</p><p>Once he’s done nearly falling off the fire escape in shock, Cecil twists around as much as he can without plummeting to his death and looks down at the sidewalk, heart racing wildly.  </p><p>It’s Guillermo, all right. He’s ditched the librarian sweater in a concession to the warming weather and he looks rather more haggard than when Cecil last saw him, but Cecil’s heart and stomach still do that stupid thing where they thrash around in his torso apparently trying to switch places, so unfortunately <em>that</em> shit appears to be unchanged.</p><p>“Are you here to see me?” Cecil stammers.</p><p>“Um. Yeah. If that’s okay. If it’s not, it’s fine, I can just—” Guillermo does an awkward hip-wiggle and sort of points back down the street.</p><p>“Of course! Yes, totally. Sorry, just…rescuing my dead plants. Well, not really rescuing, per se, because they’re already…” Cecil sighs and gives up on communicating that particular train of thought. Apparently he’s developed a recent case of the brain scramblies. “Hang on, I’ll let you in.” He swings back into his apartment, bashing every single one of his joints on the windowsill in the process, stumbles across the living room, and yanks open the door. Guillermo’s already standing serenely on the other side. Fucking vampire slayers.</p><p>“It’s been a while,” Cecil says once they’re awkwardly perched on the sofa with tea.  Guillermo has deposited a backpack on the ground that clatters and jingles in a way that suggests it’s full to the brim with the various and sundry tools of the vampire-slaying trade. The storm outside is beginning to ramp up in earnest.</p><p>“What, two, two-and-a-half months?” muses Guillermo, frowning as he does the math. “Not since February.”</p><p>“Sounds about right,” says Cecil casually, as if he hasn’t been counting the days. He forgets that his tea is still lava and tries to take a sip, then narrowly avoids spit-taking it all over Guillermo.</p><p>“So, um. What’s been new with you?” Guillermo asks, shifting uncomfortably and looking everywhere but Cecil. From the looks of it, he’s sitting directly on top of the worst lump the sofa has to offer, out of an entire all-star lineup of them. “Has the crew picked up any new projects?”</p><p>“I’ve mostly been gun for hire, lately, since we’re a bit, uh… stalled on the vampire documentary.” Cecil eyes Guillermo meaningfully. “I was just in Utah working on a series about Mormon ballroom dancing competitions.”</p><p>“That’s a thing?”</p><p>“Oh, that is very much a thing. And I have watched <em>days upon days </em>of that thing.”</p><p>Guillermo laughs and, goddammit, it’s still Cecil’s favorite sound in the world. Three weeks of nonstop amateur rumba dancing have burned out substantial and important parts of his brain but apparently have refused to touch the one responsible for pining. Fucking hell.</p><p>“How’s Ana?” Guillermo asks. </p><p>“The usual,” Cecil says, watching rain begin to fleck the windowpanes so he doesn't have to keep staring at Guillermo's awkward fidgeting. “She’s been teaching martial arts on the side, so she’s even scarier than she used to be. She might even give you a run for your money, considering she’s immune to holy water and crucifixes.”</p><p>“Oh, I have absolutely no doubt that she could kick the crap out of me. Probably in her sleep.”</p><p>Small talk over and silence reigning, Cecil squares up to the inevitable. “So, what’ve you been up to? We haven’t heard a peep since…well…” He gestures loosely in a way intended to mean ‘that one fun time you slaughtered a theatre full of vampires to save your dumb 13<sup>th</sup>-century warlord paramour and his weird friends, then unceremoniously ejected me and vanished into the night.’</p><p>Guillermo suddenly becomes very interested in his fingernails. “Oh, you know. This and that. My mom says hi, by the way.”</p><p>Cecil takes a minute to digest that. “Well, I say hi back.”</p><p>“Good.” Guillermo nods vigorously, then busies himself with taking a massive sip of tea and promptly choking on it.</p><p>Once Cecil is done thumping his back and Guillermo has more or less stopped wiping his eyes, Cecil ventures, “I’m happy to see you regardless, but what brings you here? Is there something you need?”</p><p>“Actually, there is,” says Guillermo. The fidgeting gets demonstrably worse. “I’ve got a bit of a…liability problem. And I was wondering if you could help me out.”</p><p>“Dude, there’s no universe in which I should be consulted for legal help. Just ask my aunties. They bemoan the fact that I’m not a doctor or a lawyer every single day.”</p><p>“It’s not that kind of liability.” Guillermo’s face is hard to read: a mixture of nerves and excitement and…is that minxiness? Maybe the ballroom dancing broke Cecil’s brain even worse than he thought. He frowns, baffled.</p><p>“What kind of liability is it, then?”</p><p>Guillermo leans right up into Cecil’s personal space and says very softly, “The kind where I’m a virgin surrounded by vampires.” </p><p>“Oh,” says Cecil stupidly, every single coherent thought he’s ever had rapidly leaving the premises. “That one.” And he closes the distance between them. </p><p>*</p><p>In hindsight, telling Ana while she was in the middle of beating the shit out of a punching bag was probably not a good call.</p><p>“He showed up, made small talk, and then straight-up propositioned me.”</p><p>Ana lets out a noise like a softball caught in a blender and whirls around. Cecil, hovering at the edge of the mat, covers his face out of instinct. “<em>Why?”</em></p><p>“Because having an unpunched V-card is kind of a liability in the vampire-slaying game, and I was apparently his best option for doing the punching. Metaphorically.”</p><p>“You turned him down, I hope.”</p><p>Cecil slowly inches behind a folded-up gym mat.</p><p>“You didn’t turn him down. Fucking <em>hell, </em>Cecil. You slept with him!”</p><p>Cecil sinks down onto the gym mat and buries his face in his hands. “I did.”</p><p>Ana dramatically flings herself down next to him and rolls onto her back. “Well, shit.” She stares at the ceiling. “Was it…okay?”</p><p>“It was really, really okay. Exceedingly okay, in fact. Spectacularly okay, really.”</p><p>Ana sighs and grudgingly holds out her fist for him to bump it. Once he obliges, she clears her throat and declares, “I’m going to hit pause on being furious at you for two seconds because I have a lot of questions. What constitutes gay virginity in the eyes of vampire sex magic? Like, what act does one have to do to stop smelling like a virgin, since virginity is a social construct devised by the patriarchy in order to control women’s bodies? Is vampire sex magic itself a patriarchal construction? Does it even recognize gay sex as sex?" </p><p>“Well…we know that gay sex is fair game, since Jeremy and Constantine--" He makes a slightly rude hand gesture to illustrate his point "--at the biannual orgy and it apparently rendered Jeremy sufficiently non-virginal. Beyond that...Guillermo wasn’t sure, exactly. And I’m not particularly gifted in the virgin-scenting department.”</p><p>“So…”</p><p>“We covered everything. Some of it multiple times. Just to be sure." Cecil stops trying to fight the giant smile creeping onto his face and just lets it do its thing.</p><p>Ana closes her eyes in despair. “Did he sleep over?”</p><p>“I mean, there wasn’t all that much sleeping involved. But…yes. And then the following night as well, because we were pretty sore and it was still raining anyway.”</p><p>“Wipe that smirk off your face right now, you smug bastard. Obviously I don’t have to tell you that it was a spectacularly bad idea.”</p><p>Cecil groans and returns his face to his hands, where it is apparently living now. He’s still smiling, though. “You do not.” He cracks an eye open and peers out from between his fingers. “But what if he was genuinely in danger, and by having sex with him, I put a stop to that?”</p><p>“Oh, so you’re saying that you tapped that because the supernatural world order was hanging in the balance? How magnanimous of you!” Ana says in mock awe. “Christ on a bicycle, some people’s children.”</p><p>“You never know!” squawks Cecil defensively. “Single beat of a butterfly’s wings, change the entire course of history, et cetera.”</p><p>“Have you told anyone on the crew that Guillermo’s resurfaced? According to Tanya’s last email blast, no one’s been heard from since that night at the theatre.”</p><p>“No.”  </p><p>“Are you going to tell them?”</p><p>“I wasn’t planning on it. Should I?”</p><p>“Fuck no.”</p><p>“Great. We’re on the same page, then.” He rolls over until he can get his feet under him and stands. “I’ve got to go do video for a bat mitzvah on Long Island. See you later?”   </p><p>Ana reaches out blindly and grabs him by the pant leg. Sometimes her ninja reflexes are really terrifying. “Slow your roll, there. We’re on the same page about you not telling the crew. We are definitely not on the same page about the ethics of you shacking up with one of the protagonists of your documentary.”</p><p>“I’m pretty sure it was a one-time thing. A ‘wham, bam, thank you ma’am, now I’m not an extra-delicious vampire-attracting snack’ sort of deal.” Cecil puts his hands on his hips and looks down at Ana. “He’s gone back to doing whatever supernatural bullshit his virginity was interfering with. This was just a blip on the radar, nothing more. Promise.”</p><p>Ana eyes him suspiciously, but she lets him pinky-swear anyway.</p><p>*</p><p>A blustery evening a week later finds Cecil sprawled on the couch, nursing a bowl of spaghetti and kicking Ana’s ass at Words With Friends. He's just about to deliver the coup de grace when a tap on the window startles him enough to nearly upend the bowl into his lap.</p><p>“I live on the <em>third floor</em>,” he splutters as he hauls the window open to admit Guillermo. “Can’t you just knock on the door like a normal person?” It has no bite, though, and he’s definitely grinning like a loon.</p><p>“Where’s the fun in that?” says Guillermo, setting down what can only be described as a tie-dye fanny pack full of murder weapons. The Nalgene full of holy water rolls off the edge of the couch had hits the floor with a thud.</p><p>“To what do I owe the pleasure?” asks Cecil. “And do I have to be worried about a horde of vampire assassins crawling in through the vents?”</p><p>“Not at all. I lost them somewhere in Secaucus. I’m pretty sure they’ve all been run over by a train.” Guillermo bites his lip and grins sheepishly, moving in closer. “And as for to whom you owe the pleasure…” He raises his eyebrows suggestively and jerks his head in the direction of the bedroom like the ridiculous, unfairly-sexy nerd that he is. </p><p>Cecil frowns. “That doesn’t even make sense.”</p><p>“Does too.”</p><p>“Does not.”</p><p>“Does too!”</p><p>“Does not!”</p><p>Guillermo throws his hands up in the air. “Look, do you want to do the dance with no pants or not?”</p><p>“Oh my god, <em>stop talking</em>.”</p><p>“You wanna know how you can get me to stop talking, hmm?” Guillermo challenges, grinning. He sidles in closer.</p><p>Cecil tackles him.</p><p>*</p><p>“Anything you want to share with the class?” asks Cecil quite some time later. </p><p>“Mmmph?” mumbles Guillermo, his cheek pressed to Cecil’s chest. Come-dumb is an unfairly good look on him. Cecil sighs and cards his fingers through Guillermo’s hair. Guillermo closes his eyes and leans into the touch, exhaling softly.</p><p>“What you’ve been up to since Theatre des Vampires. Other than seducing me, that is. I know about that part.” Cecil himself is not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer post-orgasm. </p><p>Guillermo shakes his head. “You can probably guess.”</p><p>“Guerilla warfare with a bunch of vampires who are trying to hunt you down, I presume. I can think of no other legitimate reason to go to Secaucus.” Cecil strokes his fingertips up the nape of Guillermo’s neck, earning himself a happy shiver in response.</p><p>“Close enough.”</p><p>“Is there anything I can…I don’t know, help with?” He groans, his fingers stilling on Guillermo’s neck. “Sorry, that sounded pathetic even in my head and then somehow it still came out of my mouth.”</p><p>Guillermo laughs softly, then pulls the quilt further over them and starts sliding down Cecil’s body. Cecil’s brain, traitorous organ that it is, instantly short-circuits. “Not at the moment, but it’s sweet of you to offer,” Guillermo says softly from somewhere around Cecil’s midsection.</p><p>“Okay, just…let me know. If the need arises, that is,” Cecil babbles, feeling himself growing less coherent by the second.</p><p>“I think there’s a rather different need arising at the moment…”</p><p>“Are you trying to distract me with sex?”</p><p>“Yep. Is it working?”</p><p>“You know damn well it’s working, you smug bastar—<em>ohhh fucking hell please do that again.”</em></p><p>
  <strong>* </strong>
</p><p>They settle into something that, if you don’t scrutinize it for too long, faintly resembles a routine. Guillermo blows into Cecil’s sad little apartment in Bensonhurst on a gust of wind, sometimes covered in miscellaneous supernatural gunk and always armed to the teeth. There’s no fixed pattern to his appearances: sometimes he’ll show up four days out of the week; sometimes he’s gone for a fortnight and Cecil has convinced himself that he’s dead. Once Guillermo’s come inside (Cecil finally persuades him to use the door instead of the window), Cecil makes him a plate of whatever he’s got on the stove. Guillermo eats, praises his cooking extensively, and heads off to shower. Sometimes he emerges from the bathroom after a respectable period of time and they brew a pot of tea and play a board game, but more often than not Cecil straightens up the kitchen and joins him in the shower. From there, it’s but a few short steps to the bed (or, if they’re feeling adventurous, the squashy armchair in the corner).          </p><p>Guillermo likes closeness; he likes touch. He’s had precious little of it in his adult life and sometimes there are learning curves (see: Cecil trying to hug him from behind while he was cooking (they put out the fire eventually)), but the way that Guillermo absolutely <em>melts </em>under Cecil's hands is absolutely priceless. Though he’s still a bit bashful about it, he reacts with wonderment that he can ask Cecil for what he wants and Cecil will eagerly oblige him. He likes making Cecil happy, and sometimes in pursuit of this end they slip into moments that ride the edge of what a more conscientious, less lust-addled Cecil might identify as Some Dynamics We Should Probably Negotiate First. </p><p>Fortunately, Cecil likes all of these things too. Technically, he supposes, he’s getting what he’s wanted all this time: cozy evenings in bed with the man he’s spent the better part of a year pining for. He does, however, get the sneaking suspicion that Guillermo is merely using him as a safe house. And there is another suspicion, sneakier still, that Guillermo considers sex to be the price of admission.</p><p>Cecil’s picked up a gig working on some true-crime drivel that films at a studio in Queens, so he slides out of Guillermo’s arms in the mornings (the dude’s a cuddler) and departs with a whispered reminder to lock the door. He spends his day halfheartedly filming C-listers chewing the scenery and comes home to an apartment that is devoid of Guillermo but often does have a plate of delicious baked goods on the table. Sometimes they’re still warm. </p><p>Ana, for all her disapproval, is unrelenting in her demands for gory details. Cecil fends her off for as long as he can, but she’s very good at getting him drunk. And besides, he misses working with her so much that it’s a constant low ache somewhere behind his ribs. He misses the whole film crew: the impossible schedule, the bawdy conversations, and the shit-your-pants moments of terror. He even misses sitting in traffic on the fucking bridge every morning. Sure, he’s no longer nocturnal, frostbitten, or afraid for his life; he gets a lot more reading done on the subway than he did in the van. And then there’s the soft, desperate noise Guillermo makes when he comes, which is a truly magnificent consolation prize. But he still feels unsettled.</p><p>As the weeks pass, Cecil’s traitorous mind distills down all of that nostalgia for what is probably irretrievably gone into that stupid, wildly elaborate betting pool about whether Guillermo and Nandor would ever get together. It never got taken off the cloud; it seems that by mutual, silent agreement the crew has agreed to leave it up as some sort of extremely inappropriate monument. It’s been annotated heavily, with dates and times and fine print of dubious quality; the point totals are frozen where they were when Rosario, shaking slightly, did the final update as they drove back to Brooklyn from Theatre des Vampires.  (Points went to Kara, Tanya, and Demetrius for predicting that Guillermo would dramatically save Nandor’s ass; bonus points went to Tanya and Demetrius for predicting that Nandor would need saving as a direct result of his own stupidity).</p><p>Cecil doesn’t quite know why he does it, but sometimes when he wakes up in the wee hours of the morning and can’t get back to sleep, he’ll pull up the spreadsheet and read through it as Guillermo dozes beside him. (Because he’s a totally chill and well-balanced adult, he startles and shoves his phone under the pillow every time Guillermo so much as twitches.) Maybe it’s an act of self-flagellation--after all, he's now standing directly in the way of everything his friends have spent months shrieking joyously about while sleep-deprived and frostbitten. Yet he prefers to think of it as a strange kind of coping mechanism: a way to reside momentarily in that world of batshit-crazy potential, before everything started closing in.</p><p>
  <strong>*            </strong>
</p><p>Summer draws inexorably closer in a Guillermo-filled haze. In the relentlessly hot and muggy back end of May, the true-crime show continues its slow, aggravating crawl and Cecil picks up more gigs doing videography for weddings and mitzvahs, which kind of suck but usually come with fancy snacks. He and Ana start advertising their AV services as a package deal, so there’s also the absolute hilarity of trekking all over the city together shooting B-roll for movies that are definitely going to flop. (Technically, the two of them are still employed by Jemaine Media, just on an indefinite furlough due to extenuating vampiric circumstances. Which is not all that bad because, hey, health insurance). He also finally takes advantage of the free martial arts classes Ana’s always offering and realizes that he actually does quite enjoy jiu jitsu. (Ana has the sense to keep the bawdy remarks about the benefits Guillermo must be reaping from Cecil’s newfound core strength to herself. Mostly.) Ana, who has apparently long harbored dreams about being Mr. Miyagi, also starts training Guillermo in the finer points of ass-kicking, which means that everyone has abs now, which is pretty great. Guillermo starts looking marginally less haggard; Ana issues fewer dire warnings about the potential for the situation to devolve into an ethical clusterfuck. Guillermo still won’t talk about what he’s up to, though sometimes right on the edge of sleep he’ll gasp and whimper and shake in fear. Cecil can do nothing but hold him closer.  </p><p>*</p><p>A weekend in early June finds Cecil and Ana up in the Catskills covering a billionaire wedding, which kind of sucks but does come with a chocolate fountain and some hangtime in which they paddle a rowboat around a private mountain lake. (Granted, neither one of them has ever been in a boat before and this does pose some technical difficulties, but after several near-flips and a whole lot of profanity they more or less get it together). They’ve barely shoved the boat desperately back at its keeper and are clopping back up the dock towards the lodge when Cecil’s phone buzzes.</p><p>“Guillermo,” guesses Ana, whipping Cecil with her towel hard enough to nearly send him into the water. “You have that stupid dopey face on.”</p><p>“Not telling,” says Cecil smugly, turning around and snapping a photo of the lake.</p><p>“And you’re sending him that photo.”</p><p>“None of your business.” He sends the text and bounces up and down nervously on the dock, making it bob violently enough to earn him a dirty look from the boat guy. His phone buzzes again. He frowns as he reads. “Oh, wait. Now it <em>is </em>your business.”</p><p>“What sort of business are we talking here, exactly?” asks Ana suspiciously.</p><p>Cecil squints at his phone. “Drinks?”</p><p>*</p><p>It’s a hipster beer garden in Brighton Beach. Cecil looks sideways at Guillermo—they’re more or less in agreement that wine is the way to go, with whiskey being acceptable if you’re looking to get the job done quickly. Guillermo shrugs and steers Cecil and Ana towards a picnic table in the corner; for a few minutes they’re preoccupied with acquiring overpriced artisanal tater tots and lagers that have names like “The Death Star’s Wedgie.”</p><p>“Why do I feel like this isn’t just a fun, groovy hangout among friends?” Ana asks once they’re settled in. She steals a well-endowed nacho from Guillermo, presumably as penance in advance for whatever supernatural bullshit he’s about to foist on them.</p><p>“Yeah, about that…” says Guillermo guiltily, pushing his sunglasses further up his nose as if to hide behind them. He’s still successfully stalling for time when a series of very large shadows fall across the table.</p><p>“Sorry, sorry, bridge was a nightmare!” says a familiar voice. Cecil looks up, shielding his eyes from the sun that bursts over the silhouettes of the newcomers.</p><p>“It’s the werewolves,” he breathes.</p><p>“Sup?” asks the lead werewolf as they all work themselves into the opposite side of the picnic table. It’s oddly graceful, the way they make themselves all fit, like a Sasquatch-only ballet. One werewolf peels off determinedly towards the food trucks.</p><p>“Nothing much. How are things for you guys? I saw that huge full moon the other night.” Guillermo swats Ana’s hand away from his nachos.</p><p>“Yeah, it was pretty gnarly. We went out to Fire Island, had some brewskis and burritos, and ran on the beach.”</p><p>“Didn’t people notice?”</p><p>“They were all either on drugs or too busy hooking up.”</p><p>“Nice,” Cecil congratulates them, in the absolute absence of anything better to say. The lead werewolf eyes him and Ana.</p><p>“What are these two doing here?” he asks Guillermo.</p><p>“Excellent question,” says Ana, demurely sipping her beer. “Guillermo, dear. What exactly are these two doing here?”</p><p>“Look,” says Guillermo, pushing his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose so that they can make eye contact. (Well, the werewolves can. Cecil, sitting next to him, can’t, but he can appreciate the dramatic effect.) Then he sighs and leans back. “Toby’s still at the food truck.”</p><p>“Toby, get over here!” barks the Lead Werewolf, waving him back over. Toby bounds over to them, hands full of waffle fries laden with all sorts of hipster bullshit, and squeezes in to the werewolf side of the picnic table. Once all of the snacks have been appropriately doled out, Guillermo clears his throat meaningfully and starts over again.</p><p>“As you may know, there have been a number of…happenings throughout the greater New York area.” He says it very weightily, looking around at the assembled werefolk.</p><p>“Are those happenings that you’re killing vampires and you want our advice and allegiance, since we're hereditary enemies with a historic peace treaty?” asks Lead Werewolf casually, draining his beer in one gulp.</p><p>“Is 1993 really long enough ago for the treaty to be considered historic? That’s, like, a young millennial of a treaty,” Ana points out.</p><p>Guillermo glowers at her. “Anyway. I’ve brought the humans here—”</p><p>“Uh, excuse me, you’re also a human,” Ana interjects. <strike></strike></p><p>“I’ve brought the humans here,” repeats Guillermo, throwing Cecil a look that Cecil assumes means roughly 'we will discuss your friend’s diarrhea of the mouth LATER,' “Because I’m proposing an alliance. We both want the same thing. I want certain vampires gone, and you’re terrorized by those same vampires and therefore presumably also want them gone. I checked the facts, and the treaty is only applicable on Staten Island. <em>Plus,</em>”—and he’s really winding himself up for this one—“I know for a fact that the vampires on Long Island—” all the werewolves growl as one--“Are harassing you guys.”</p><p>“They keep leaving brownies out as bait,” sulks the preppy werewolf.</p><p>“And it’s not a chocolate thing. We’re fine with chocolate. It’s the fact that the brownies are actually weapons-grade edibles and it’s <em>very </em>hard to think straight when you’re stoned off your gourd <em>and </em>currently a giant dog.”  </p><p>Guillermo whips out what Cecil has begun referring to as his Shark Tank smile. "Sounds like we can be very helpful to each other, then."</p><p>Guillermo and the werewolves start hashing out details and Cecil more or less stops paying attention. Listen, it’s hot out, he’s been awake since the ass-crack of dawn on that stupid crime drama set, and he’s distracted by the way Guillermo talks and how his hands move and how cool he looks in sunglasses and basically everything about him, so Cecil more or less lets all the words wash over him. It’s nice, in a way, sitting out in the sunlight drinking a not-completely-terrible beer and just listening to other people talk. He can get the details from Guillermo later, preferably amidst a cuddle.</p><p>“<em>Anyway,</em>” Guillermo says emphatically enough to shake Cecil out of his trance. “These two have none of the supernatural constraints that you guys do. Namely, they can be out in the sunlight, unlike vampires, and don’t turn into dogs, unlike…well, you guys. No offense. They’re also perpetually underestimated by supernatural forces, yet have a great deal of knowledge because they’re spent two years making a documentary about them. They’re the perfect go-betweens. Also, Ana is scarily good at fighting people and Cecil is…mildly good at fighting people,” Guillermo concludes with a flourish.</p><p>The werewolves consider, muttering quietly among themselves. Cecil tries to subtly look at Ana to clock her response to all this, since he has zero idea what the fuck just happened.</p><p>“Deal!” says Lead Werewolf, raising his beer in tribute. “Pound it, man!” he urges Cecil, holding out a fist.</p><p>Dazed, Cecil pounds it.</p><p>*</p><p>“So what exactly are Ana and I being voluntold to do?” he asks Guillermo quietly as they sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the bus ride back to his apartment. (Ana took off for home on her bike like the cool hipster that she is.) Guillermo eyes him extremely judgmentally. “Sorry, sorry, I just zoned out.” He lets his head fall onto Guillermo’s shoulder. “I’m aware that you’re the last person I should be lecturing about the meaning of the word ‘tired,’ but, dude. I am very, very tired.”</p><p>Guillermo casts a surreptitious glance around. It’s just garden-variety New York bus population, but he seems to clock it as a threat nonetheless. (All things considered, perhaps that's a wise approach).</p><p>“I’m getting too recognizable,” he says quietly, studying an elderly woman whose shopping trolley is entirely full of shrimp and party hats. “I have to be careful where I go and where I’m seen.”</p><p>“So…I’m the glorified errand boy?” </p><p>Guillermo looks pained. “You offered to help! Also, it’s not like that.”</p><p>“I can’t be held responsible for anything I say in the afterglow. Sex makes my mouth promise things without consulting my brain.” He sighs and relents a little. “So what’s it like, then, if it’s not like that?” </p><p>“Um. Message-passing. Reconnaissance. General miscellany. It’s a bit hard to know in advance. I mostly wanted you and Ana at that meeting in case the werewolves decided to get limb-rippy. They’ve been known to do that.”</p><p>“…<em>excuse me?</em>”</p><p>*</p><p>He manages to keep it together until they get back to his apartment. And then the second they get through the door, he loses any semblance of an ability to keep it together.</p><p>“Were you going to clear that shit with me before you went all ‘Ah yes, here’s our perfect camera-wielding cannon fodder’ to a bunch of werewolves? Or did you just think, ‘Ooh, this one’s got a lovely series of conflicts of interest that would make this extra-special for everyone involved. Bonus points if there’s a dismemberment in the beer garden!’” Cecil toes off his shoes at the door, furious but not furious enough to throw all standards of cleanliness out the window.</p><p>Guillermo stares him down while toeing off his own shoes. (Listen, cleanliness is a quality Cecil absolutely looks for in a man). “I thought you missed all the—as you’re so fond of calling it—<em>supernatural bullshit.</em>  You're fed up with the mundane. Weren’t you just complaining that you hate the mitzvahs and the subway smells terrible and the lady who works at the bodega won't stop hitting on you?”</p><p>Cecil doesn’t really have an answer to that one. (In truth, both the the subway smell and the bodega lady's overtures have been particularly overwhelming of late.) He has even less of an answer when Guillermo pulls a baggie out of his pocket and offers it to Cecil with a sheepish grin.</p><p>“…what’s that?”</p><p>“Got it from Toby.”</p><p>“And it’s…?” He stops. “Oh god, it’s drugs.” He stops again and squints at it. “Wait, no, it’s brownies.”</p><p>Guillermo’s laughing. “Cecil, you’re officially even more of a square than I am.” He hands the baggie to Cecil. “They have weed in them. We don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”</p><p>“But if we don’t do it together…” Cecil tosses the brownies from hand to hand.</p><p>“I will be giggling by myself in a garden shed in Ozone Park.”</p><p>Cecil stares. “Dude, you have some <em>depths.</em>”</p><p>Guillermo shoves him playfully. “Do you want to get high or not?”</p><p>Cecil pops open the baggie. “Bring it.”</p><p>*</p><p>He’s never done this before. It’s not that he’s necessarily opposed; he’s just always been busy doing other things and also vaguely afraid of getting in trouble. But with Guillermo, it’s…nice. Easy. He puts the kettle on for tea and plates up the brownies while Guillermo teases him mercilessly about how this might just be the most genteel consumption of edibles in human history, then they get cozy on the sofa.</p><p>“The thing to know about edibles,” Guillermo begins, pulling Cecil’s socked feet into his lap and starting to massage them, “Is that you won’t feel anything for at least half an hour. And then you’ll feel everything all at once.”</p><p>“Okay,” Cecil says, finishing his brownie, wiping his hands on Guillermo’s pants, and holding out his hands for Guillermo to pass him the tea. “What should we do in the meantime?”</p><p>*</p><p>True to Guillermo’s word, the marijuana hits Cecil like a freight train just as round three of Jenga is starting to get heated.</p><p>“Whoa,” he mumbles, sitting back heavily into the couch cushions.</p><p>Guillermo somehow manages to grin suavely while extracting a Jenga piece from the tower. “Yeah?”</p><p>“…yeah.” Cecil giggles a little bit.</p><p>“How do you feel?”</p><p>“Mmm…warm? Floaty? Unconcerned?” He frowns. “Fond of adjectives, too, apparently.”</p><p>Guillermo chucks the Jenga piece back into the box and sinks back into the couch with him. “That’s promising.” He swivels Cecil until he can pull Cecil’s feet into his lap. Cecil relaxes back into the cushions and stares at the ceiling.  </p><p>“How about you?” he asks, although half of it comes out as an undignified giggle-snort.</p><p>Guillermo smiles. “Not yet. Let's see if this feels different now under the influence of the devil's lettuce.” He begins massaging Cecil’s feet in earnest. Cecil lets out an extravagant groan.</p><p>“What does it feel like for you?” Cecil mumbles, vaguely aware that all of the words of that sentence were probably not in the order that he intended. “What flavor of Guillermo should I be bracing myself for? <em>God, </em>dude, that feels amazing.” He shoves his feet further into Guillermo’s lap. Guillermo digs his thumbs in harder and Cecil’s happy as a clam.</p><p>“Well,” says Guillermo quietly, watching Cecil with dark eyes. “I get happy and giggly and a little spacey, like you are right now. I also tend to really, really want to have sex.”</p><p>Cecil considers this. “But you’ve never had sex with anyone but me, and you’ve never been high around me. So how…?” Guillermo, blessed be he, is gracious enough to wait for Cecil's brain to get its poop in a group. “<em>Ohhhh. </em>You get incredibly horny and therefore masturbate when you’re high. But you’ve never had actual sex while high and you want to do that with me now. Once you're actually feeling high. Got it.” He grins and gives Guillermo a double thumbs-up. “Rock on with your bad self.”</p><p>Guillermo’s hands suddenly still on Cecil’s feet. Cecil almost moans piteously at the interruption but then it dawns on him.</p><p>“Yeah? You're feeling it?” he asks excitedly, sitting up a little in order to see better. </p><p>“…yeah,” Guillermo says slowly, staring at him with undisguised lust.</p><p>“Bedroom?” Cecil suggests, somehow managing to totally crack himself up in the process.</p><p>“<em>Please</em>,” breathes Guillermo.</p><p>*</p><p>By the time they reach the bedroom they’re laughing and clinging to each other and doing a spectacularly bad job at undressing, which is a pity considering that a certain amount of nudity was rather the point of the endeavor. </p><p>“Whoops!” crows Cecil, tripping over his own pants and nearly faceplanting on the floor. Guillermo snorts and barely manages to catch him and throw him gently onto his back on the bed. “Socks, socks, socks!” Cecil chants, gently kicking Guillermo. “You’re not allowed to have socks on! Them’s the rules.”</p><p>“Demanding,” grumbles Guillermo, but he somehow manages to get his socks off and climb onto the bed without anyone getting maimed in the process.</p><p>“Let’s boogie!” Cecil proclaims, pulling him close.</p><p>Guillermo snorts and tries to hide his laughter in Cecil’s shoulder.</p><p>“Hey, we're all learning things tonight,” Cecil scolds. “Currently we are learning that high Cecil is not suave Cecil, but high Cecil knows that high Guillermo doesn’t mind one bit.”</p><p>*</p><p>“That’s new,” Cecil observes from his current, rather compromising position. Weed apparently knocks his concept of linear time flat on its ass, but he gets the sense that they've been at this for a while. Guillermo startles and stops in his tracks, bless him. Unfortunately, that is the exact opposite course of action to what Cecil wants right now. He moans pitifully and reaches back out for Guillermo. “No, no, no, don’t go!”</p><p>Guillermo stops rooting around frantically for the stakes he keeps under the bed and eyes Cecil quizzically. “What’s new, then?”</p><p>“You’re, um. Kind of glowing?” Cecil squints up at him through a haze of weed, lust, and confusion. “Is this some weird vampire slayer sex magic thing I don’t know about?”</p><p>Guillermo looks baffled. “I don’t know.” He frowns and looks down at himself. “What sort of glowing are we talking about?” He twists around to try and see his back, his frown deepening. Cecil sighs, resigning himself to the fact that the evening’s entertainment is possibly over. “Okay, take this with a grain of salt. You were raised Catholic and I was raised Catholic, so there’s a certain degree of extreme suggestibility and probable projection here…”</p><p>“I have a halo,” says Guillermo flatly. </p><p>“I mean, yes. Sort of. If the stylized saint paintings came to life and the glow wasn’t just around your head and looked less overtly like a halo. I’m not saying you’re a saint or even that I necessarily believe in any of that, I’m just saying that to my recovering-Catholic brain you’re glowing in such a way that evokes…” He trails off and sort of pats Guillermo's thigh in an utterly crap attempt at consolation. </p><p>Guillermo sits back on his haunches. The glow is faint in the warm beam of the bedside lamp falling falls over the planes of his body, but it’s definitely there, radiating off his skin as clear as anything. “You’re stoned out of your gourd, Cecil.”</p><p>“No, it’s not that!” He swats grumpily at Guillermo. “I’ve more or less made perfect sense this entire time. Just with bonus giggling and maybe some words in the wrong places and also I'm somehow even less suave than usual. Correct?”</p><p>Guillermo sighs. “Yes. Correct.” He surveys himself again. “Weird.”</p><p>Cecil makes one last, desperate bid to save this thing. “Yeah, but…it’s not a <em>bad </em>weird. In fact, one could go so far as to say it’s a <em>good </em>weird. Like, a <em>very </em>good weird.”</p><p>Guillermo rolls his eyes, but he returns to Cecil’s arms with minimal grumbling.</p><p>*</p><p>“What’s the deal with vampires in the summer?” Cecil asks Guillermo a few evenings later, frowning at the crossword. Cecil has the day off and Guillermo has been prevailed upon to linger; the smell of after-dinner buñuelos filling the apartment is driving Cecil to distraction. (The sight of Guillermo making said buñuelos may or may not also be driving him to distraction). “Seems like they’ve got very little time to actually be awake.”</p><p>“They’re much more vulnerable than they are in the winter. Hence the…” Guillermo gestures at the veritable forest of stakes that has taken up residence in Cecil’s wine rack. “I do feel bad about stabbing them in their sleep.”</p><p>“Hey, that’s the way to go,” shrugs Cecil. “They never know what hit ‘em. If I were a vampire, that’s how I’d want it to end.” He shakes out the newspaper and switches over to the Sudoku, hearing Colin Robinson’s voice in his head imploring Will Shortz to eat his shorts as he does. The fire escape rattles outside. Guillermo startles, batter flying off his spatula.</p><p>“That’s just Rabies Fred,” Cecil says idly, filling in numbers. “That psychotic squirrel who chased you last week. Sometimes he gets up on the fire escape and screams for a bit.”</p><p>“That’s not it,” says Guillermo slowly; Cecil looks up to see him brandishing the spatula cautiously. There’s more rattling, following by an extremely heavy thud that, unless the kebab place downstairs has started giving out free samples to the local fauna, is probably not Rabies Fred. Before Cecil quite knows what is happening, Guillermo has shoved a spaghetti strainer on his head and pushed him under the kitchen table.</p><p>“Get down and don’t move!” Guillermo hisses, swiping a handful of stakes off the wine rack and moving towards the window. Cecil hits the deck and tries to mentally prepare himself to be ripped limb from limb, although he doesn’t actually quite know how to do that. Guillermo vaults over the arm of the sofa, snatching up a Nalgene of holy water as he does, and stops dead.</p><p>“<em>Pinche cabron,”</em> he sighs. He drops the stakes with a clatter and heaves open the window. “Come in,” he mutters, sinking down on the arm of the sofa.</p><p>“Guillermo!” booms/whines a familiar voice. Cecil, who has just begun to slide cautiously out from under the table, hastily retreats back underneath and clutches the spaghetti strainer to his head. From his position, he can’t see anything above waist level, but he still feels a surge of terror as a familiar pair of knee-length boots hits the floor, a long midnight-blue cape swishing behind them.</p><p>“Nandor,” says Guillermo coolly.</p><p>There is a long pause, followed by a noise that Cecil can only describe as a lengthy and intense sniff. And then, a single word.</p><p>“Who?” asks Nandor.</p><p>Cecil figures that’s as good a cue as any. Fortunately, he has the presence of mind to take the spaghetti strainer off his head before he rises to his feet. “Me,” he says, hoping it doesn’t sound as squeaky as he fears.</p><p>Nandor looks genuinely floored. “Camera Two?” He grimaces as if he’s smelled something particularly nasty.</p><p>“The very same.”</p><p>Guillermo is looking back and forth between the two of them as if he’s watching a tennis match. He’s cautiously picked one stake back up, although it’s not exactly clear who he plans to use it on.</p><p>Nandor straightens up, clearly trying to regain some degree of composure. “Well, that’s…very kind of you. Now Guillermo isn’t going to trot around putting himself into danger by attracting every vampire in the city with his virginal smell.”</p><p>“Sorry, <em>kind of me?</em>”</p><p>Nandor shrugs. “You know, it’s <em>Guillermo. </em>He’s the last donut in the display case. And you, Camera Two, walked into the donut shop and bought that donut out of a sense of duty because the proprietor was down on his luck and his wife had the bloody flux.”</p><p>Cecil briefly fantasizes about appropriating the stake from Guillermo and stabbing Nandor himself.</p><p>“You’re way out of line, mate,” he warns. “Especially considering you just broke into my apartment.”</p><p>“Guillermo invited me!”</p><p>“That’s a technicality, and I will be having a word with him later about that.” Cecil glowers at Guillermo, who has the decency to look sheepish. He has no idea where this surge of bravery came from, but he’s going to ride it for as long as it lasts. “How did you find out where I live, anyway?”</p><p>“I was just passing by.”</p><p>“In Brooklyn? You hate Brooklyn.”</p><p>“I’ve recently acquired a taste for hipsters. Very artisanal and sometimes grass-fed.”</p><p>“<em>Go,</em>” Cecil says firmly, pointing at the window. Miraculously, Nandor goes, batting off into the night without complaint (though he does bash his tiny bat self directly into the windowsill on his way out). Cecil crosses to the window and shuts it. When he turns to look at Guillermo to offer consolation and probably a small lecture on stranger danger, he sees something in Guillermo’s eyes that he’s never witnessed there before. It’s as if a realization is dawning—one that’s a little fierce and a little predatory and a lot horny.</p><p>“You alright?” Cecil asks cautiously, trying to subtly slide the stake out of Guillermo's hands.</p><p>Guillermo pounces.</p><p> </p><p> “Whoa, okay, this is new,” Cecil babbles as his back hits the bed. He’s just been thoroughly snogged against the bedroom door and manhandled to a greater degree than that to which Guillermo has historically been inclined, and while he's not complaining in the slightest, he definitely has some questions. </p><p>Guillermo--as the youth of today would say--yeets himself off the bed entirely. “Oh god, I’m so sorry. That was a lot. I don’t know where that came from. You don’t like it?” he asks in a panic, pressed back against the wall and staring wildly at Cecil. Reflexively, they both look to where certain parts of Cecil’s anatomy seem to indicate quite the opposite.</p><p>“Nah, I’m good,” pants Cecil. “Carry on.”</p><p>*</p><p>An indeterminate amount of time later, amid all the usual wreckage of a very thorough shagging, Cecil checks his phone. Guillermo has wandered into the bathroom in search of something to clean them both up with, and Cecil has the nagging suspicion that there's a barrage of emails from mitzvah parents demanding footage awaiting him. He scrolls idly through his inbox. Mitzvah parent, mitzvah parent, an advertisement for a sale on memory cards, mitzvah parent, penis enhancement spam…he pauses his scrolling. His heart leaps into his throat before his conscious brain even registers what’s going on; by the time he’s actually reading the words, his heart has leaped back down from his throat and started leading the rest of his innards in a boisterous conga line. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>To: bcc: cecil.andamo@jemaine.net </em>
</p><p>
  <em>From: tanya.karamysheva@jemaine.net </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>[URGENT] WWDITS Staff Meeting Tomorrow</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Cecil grimaces and checks the time it was sent. Sometime between cowering under the table with a spaghetti strainer on his head and getting acquainted with the new aggressive and growly Guillermo.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Hi all,</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Apologies for the short notice, but we are having an emergency crew meeting TOMORROW at 10 a.m. at the office. I know you’re all freelancing/funemployed right now, so don’t whine at me about availability.  </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>I will provide donuts. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Tanya</em>
</p><p> </p><p>“Anything important?” Guillermo asks softly, appearing in the doorway wearing a bathrobe and carrying two glasses of water. The bathrobe pocket sounds like a maraca, which Cecil surmises means Guillermo’s also thoughtfully brought him ibuprofen.</p><p>“Just, uh. Mitzvah parents who don’t understand how freaking long it takes to color grade an entire ceremony.” He stretches like a cat and returns his phone to the nightstand, only to have it vibrate insistently the second he lets go of it.</p><p>It’s a text from Ana.</p><p>
  <em>Better get your story straight before tomorrow morning, loverboy. </em>
</p><p>He tosses his phone in the general direction of the armchair and holds out his hand for Guillermo (and the ibuprofen). </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The bike ride to the staff meeting the next morning is quite possibly the worst of Cecil’s life. It’s still only early June, but the air is heavy with the mugginess and general warm-garbage smell that ravage Brooklyn in the summer. He has to slam on the brakes on no fewer than six wretched occasions (squirrel—hipster—herd of squirrels—techie—cop on a Segway—ice cream cart. In that order) and he swears that Brooklyn sprouted new potholes overnight for the sole purpose of tormenting him. And if the high five she offers him as he limps into the office is anything to go by, Ana <em>knows, </em>dammit.</p><p>“I need to talk to you,” Cecil mutters to her as they queue by the Keurig, mugs in hand.</p><p>She grins evilly. “About why you’re walking like that?”</p><p>He doesn’t dignify that one with an answer. “Nandor showed up last night.”</p><p>“Wait, <em>Nandor</em> is why you’re walking like that?”</p><p>“No, you pervert. He showed up at my apartment while Guillermo was there.” He rummages through the pod basket for the dark roast. “He, um. He knows about us.”</p><p>Comprehension dawns on Ana’s face. “Guillermo doesn’t smell like a virgin anymore.”</p><p>“Apparently. Although I guess that was sort of the point of the whole endeavor.” He silently curses whoever failed to refill the Keurig’s water tank and lugs it over to the water cooler. Ana follows.</p><p>“How did he find you?”</p><p>Cecil sighs. This is precisely the reality he really, really does not wish to confront at the moment. “Guillermo must have told him.”</p><p>“Voluntarily?”</p><p>Cecil sloshes water all over his shoes and swears quietly. “I can’t think of any other way.”</p><p>“Coercive ether-calling?”</p><p>“Aren’t you the one who’s always reminding me that Nandor is a shit hypnotist?”</p><p>“Shut up. What did Nandor do?”</p><p>“Acted as if I took one for the team by sleeping with Guillermo. As if he’s undesirable, and I stooped so low merely so that he wouldn’t get eaten by vampires.”</p><p>“Mother<em>fucker.</em>” Ana takes the water tank from him and snaps it back into the machine with more force than necessary.</p><p>“I told Nandor to get lost.”</p><p>“And you’re still here to tell the tale? Wow.” Ana looks impressed, which is pretty much like spotting a unicorn. Cecil shoves the k-cup into the machine and sets it to brew.</p><p>“Will wonders never cease. In related news, Guillermo glows like a saint now.”</p><p>“Wait—”</p><p>*</p><p>“Okay,” says Tanya once they’re all accounted for and shoving donuts into their faces. “Welcome back. Thank you for coming. Any life updates to share?” She looks around the table expectantly.</p><p>“Cecil’s getting laid,” announces Rosario with her mouth full. Everyone chokes on their donuts, loudly and rather wetly. Cecil is forced to witness a lot of chewed-up bullshit that he really, really doesn’t think he’s done anything to deserve to see.</p><p>“<em>Excuse me?”</em> he splutters once he’s done choking on his own donut. Ana thumps him on the back, but there’s a truly evil glint in her eyes as she does so.</p><p>“You’re actually styling your hair, there’s no holes in your jeans, and you’re beaming. And very obviously limping.” Rosario shrugs. “The signs are all there, my friend.”</p><p>This sets off another round of collective choking and laughing.</p><p>“Guys, this is not appropriate workplace conversation,” admonishes Tanya, but she holds her hand out for a fist bump anyway.</p><p>“Who’s the lucky guy?” asks Rick the editor, crossing and re-crossing his legs eagerly and taking a prolonged sip of his coffee. It does fuck-all to hide the smirk on his face.</p><p>“I’m not obligated to answer that,” Cecil argues, face burning. It’s always worse when it’s Rick.</p><p>“Is he hot?” Rick prods, eating a donut hole with his goddamn pinky extended.</p><p>Cecil stares at the remains of his Boston Crème as if willing them to explode in his face and put him out of his goddamn misery. “Yes.”</p><p>“Is he nice?”</p><p>He sighs. “Very. Guys, this isn’t really—”</p><p>“Cecil is his first-ever lover,” Ana declares grandly.</p><p>Absolute pandemonium breaks loose. </p><p>*</p><p>Once they’ve all been somewhat reined back in (several donuts get smashed in the crossfire and Rosario’s clipboard is used several times as a shield/battering ram), Tanya picks up where she left off. </p><p>“Anyway. As I was saying, Rick has put together a rough cut of the second series and will be sending it around for comment.”</p><p>There’s a hush around the table. </p><p>“There’s also the small matter of where we go from here.”</p><p>Nods of assent ripple around.</p><p>“As you all know, this is the time of year when we’re usually on hiatus because of the fact that vampires and sunlight don’t mix well. Moreover, we’d all thought that our subjects had vanished off the face of the earth. Guillermo is still completely unaccounted for. The last people who saw him were Cecil and Ana.” This is not strictly untrue. It just so happens that Ana last saw Guillermo on Tuesday at her martial arts studio in Astoria and Cecil last saw Guillermo…well. You know. Cecil shifts nervously in his chair, which is a huge mistake. He tries to hide his wince, but several snickers from around the table tells him that he’s failed miserably.</p><p>“However—and this is why we’ve called you all here this morning—Tanya and I have been in touch with the vampires,” Rosario announces dramatically. </p><p>Ana and Cecil look at each other in confusion.</p><p>“They’ve agreed to a small series of follow-up interviews, and for us to resume following them around on a trial basis. That means two things. First, you all will be coming off furlough, but only part-time. I wouldn’t recommend quitting your day jobs. Second, as we will effectively be on probation <em>and </em>entering into a potentially volatile situation, there will be the need for utmost professionalism.” She eyes Ana and Cecil. “Particularly from you two.” She waves a hand as if to banish the assorted indignant noises that this statement provokes from both of them.</p><p>“When do we start?” asks Demetrius.</p><p>“Uh, well, the thing is…Um. Tonight. We need to be out the door by 8:15. If you’re all here and mostly sober by seven, pupusas are on me.”</p><p>
  <em>Christ on a flaming bicycle. </em>
</p><p>*</p><p>So it comes to pass that things seem, for a moment, perched on the edge of returning to some semblance of what they once were. Except not at all, mostly due to the fact that somehow Cecil’s gotten caught in a dragnet of a whole lot of bullshit that is definitely going to come back and bite him in the ass.</p><p>It feels strange to be doing the usual pre-shoot rituals at 7 p.m. in shorts and t-shirts; usually they’re flinging gear in the van at 4 p.m. in the frigid winter dusk and yelling at Ana to turn the heat up higher. What feels even stranger is the discreet text Cecil dashes off to Guillermo’s vampire-hunter burner phone while standing at the sink in the office bathroom. <em>Won’t be home until very, very late tonight. There’s adobo in the fridge if you’re hungry. </em></p><p>His phone buzzes as they’re all sat in the tiny courtyard behind the office eating pupusas and cracking jokes. He discreetly checks it under the table.  </p><p>
  <em>Thanks. Have fun with whatever you’re doing. I’m probably stuck in Elizabeth all night though :(</em>
</p><p>Cecil smirks and types back one-thumbed while balancing a tenuous forkful of pupusa and curtido in his other hand. <em>Kinky.</em> <em>Make sure you use protection.</em></p><p>
  <em>Elizabeth New Jersey, asshole. Got to go…waiting for a certain plane to land at EWR. </em>
</p><p>Ana tosses him a glance across the picnic table. Cecil shakes his head minutely and returns his phone to his pocket.</p><p>“It is your paramour?” asks Tanya excitedly, because a) she has no chill and b) sometimes she forgets she’s not in an 18<sup>th</sup>-century bodice-ripper.</p><p>“None of your beeswax,” Cecil retorts, reaching across her to spear another pupusa.</p><p>“You know what other paramour situation we’ve got at hand?” asks McKenzie deviously, pulling out her whole-ass laptop from places unknown. “The betting pool.” There is a murmur of general interest.</p><p>“How is it even going to work, though?” asks Demetrius from the other end of the picnic table. “Guillermo’s missing.”</p><p>“There’s still plenty of categories that are still relevant,” rebuts McKenzie, squeezing in next to Kara and flipping her laptop open. “Including but not limited to Category A: Pining, Yearning, and all other Related Emotions; Category C, Sexual History; and Category F, Kinky Shit.”</p><p>“We could even make a new category!” interjects Tanya excitedly. “Specifically pertaining to what will happen this summer. Will Guillermo turn back up? Will he and Nandor find a way to work through their irreconcilable differences?  Will the entire house collapse under the weight of the sexual frustration?”</p><p>Things escalate rather quickly after that: people are gesturing wildly with forkfuls of pupusas, whipping out phones to write down notes, and generally taking the piss every which way. Cecil can’t help but sit back and laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. Four months of absence hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm at all; if anything, he would put good money on the whole lot of them having grown more feral in the interim. </p><p>And then his bubble abruptly bursts as McKenzie slides her laptop down the table. “Cecil, if you’d do the honors, O Master of the Magic Spreadsheet. I shall moderate.”</p><p><em>Shit. </em>He automatically poises his fingers over the keyboard. “What’s the new category called?”</p><p>“Summer Lovin’!” Tanya pipes up. She dearly loves <em>Grease </em>for reasons that are completely opaque to anyone who knows her even a little bit<em>. </em>McKenzie gestures magnanimously, presumably to allow it. Cecil types.</p><p>“Subcategories?” he asks, pausing to admire the spreadsheet. All other bullshit aside, it <em>is </em>a marvel of engineering.</p><p>“Conflicts of interest and sad masturbation!” cries Rick from the doorway. Cecil throws a piece of pupusa at his head. </p><p>Somehow, through a mix of democracy, benevolent dictatorship, and pure old-fashioned yelling, they hash out all the subcategories (and sub-sub categories, and sub-sub-sub categories). At length, McKenzie sits back down, satisfied and actually sweating a little (though it is, in fairness, quite swampy in the garden). Cecil types in the final few formulas one-handed while eating the last of his now-cold pupusas.</p><p>“Everyone, bets in please. Counterclockwise,” Kara says, sweeping an airy hand over the tableau before her. They go around the table, each solemnly proclaiming their opinions in turn as Cecil types. Finally, Ana and Cecil are the only two who haven’t spoken.</p><p>“Ana?” he asks nervously, fearing the answer. In response, she leans over him and types the answers in herself.</p><p>“What does it say?” asks Rosario. Cecil swallows.</p><p>“Guillermo will spend the summer kicking ass and taking names, then return to the arms of his vampire paramour at the end of it, having had lots and lots of adventurous, affirming, and possibly-kinky sex in the interim and being all the better for it.” He swallows, feeling a horrible plummeting feeling somewhere around his midsection, and pushes on. “Also, Nandor, Nadja, and Laszlo have totally had a threesome. On more than one occasion. And Simon the Devious probably got in on the action at some point too.” </p><p>*</p><p>Pupusas ingested, they load up the van and head over the fucking bridge.</p><p>Maybe it’s because he hasn’t been sleeping well, or the creeping sense of dread has finally succeeded in wearing down his nervous system, or Rosario’s pupusas had drugs in them or something, but Cecil doesn’t start to well and truly panic until Ana backs the van into the alley behind the vampires’ house, which by his calculations is about a month and a half too late.</p><p>“What if Nandor says something?” he hisses to Ana as she straps him into the Steadicam.</p><p>“Then we’re screwed,” she hisses back, tightening the straps more aggressively than strictly necessary. “Well, more accurately, you’re screwed and probably bringing the rest of us down with you. Maybe you’ll get your very own X-rated case study in the ‘how to totally fuck up making a documentary’ handbook that college kids will pay $200 for at the campus bookstore and then never read.”</p><p>“Shit,” he whispers quietly, mostly to himself. He lurks behind Demetrius as they all shuffle up to the front door and crowd expectantly on the stoop. Rosario reaches out and rings the giant antique doorbell and they all stand in utter silence, listening to it reverberate through the house. The moment is almost reverent—that is, until Rosario drops her clipboard and all of the random papers on it start flying everywhere and there’s general chaos as everyone tries to snatch them out of midair and fish them out of the bushes.</p><p>“…is this a bad time?” Nandor asks cautiously, leaning against the doorframe. Cecil’s heart leaps into his mouth.</p><p>“Nope, great time! Wonderful time! So happy to be here!” grits out Tanya from somewhere inside of a rosebush.</p><p>*</p><p>They haul all their gear in the front door; Nandor even deigns to use some of his freakish vampire strength to bring some of the heavier shit inside. The house is far tidier than last time they were here, and it is revealed in short order that the reason for this is that the vampires have somehow managed acquire new familiars. Cecil doesn’t know why this surprises him—god knows that Nandor couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag on his own, let alone function in a way that somewhat resembles a full-grown adult. He supposes that the disjuncture stems from the fact that Guillermo seemed so fundamentally and inviolably a part of the household that the idea of a replacement simply doesn’t compute. What’s more, the new familiars are two women in their early 20s who seem to be a cross between pagans and VSCO girls. There’s a lot of dangly jewelry and acid-wash denim and it’s very confusing for everyone involved.</p><p>Nadja and Laszlo come down the stairs at once to see what the fuss is about and instantly start shrieking their delight about seeing the crew again. Colin emerges from the woodwork as well, almost definitely because he can practically taste the feast of angst and fear that Cecil definitely is at this particular moment. In the general melee of everyone getting reacquainted (and the new familiars signing the release forms that Tanya has been holding in front of her like a shield since the second she walked through the front door), Nandor and Cecil at last make eye contact. Cecil jerks his head at the fancy room and saunters very casually inside. Nandor peels off from the crowd and follows, looking as ludicrous trying to be subtle as Cecil feels. Once they’re semi-hidden behind the wall, Cecil turns to face Nandor, glancing surreptitiously in the direction of the foyer.</p><p>“Not a peep, you hear me?” He hears himself say it, but he can’t believe his own ears. “Your fragile masculinity is not worth Guillermo’s safety.”</p><p>“Do your friends know about this dalliance of yours, little man? Your…summer fling?” Nandor is very, very close to him, 6-foot-something of brocade and velvet and fangs. Cecil is 5-foot-something of jeans and a t-shirt and a Steadicam vest and feels ever-so-slightly outmatched.</p><p>“Ana does.”</p><p>Nandor considers. “She does somewhat scare me.”</p><p>“As she well should.”</p><p>Nandor considers once again. “You want my silence.”</p><p>“Correct,” says Cecil slowly, not liking all of the thinking that Nandor appears to be doing. It’s vastly out of character, for one, and for two, when Nandor thinks, bad things tend to happen.</p><p>“What are you willing to offer in exchange?” Nandor shows fangs, but just a wee bit, presumably as an intimidation tactic. It’s actually kind of cute instead of scary, but Cecil supposes he can’t fault the guy since he’s never been able to see himself in a mirror to practice.</p><p>“Dude, I have absolutely nothing that you could want.” Cecil holds up his hands in surrender.</p><p>And then, belatedly, he realizes that he does in fact have one thing. “No.” He tries to stand a little taller. “I’m not giving you any information about Guillermo. That would be incredibly dishonest, and it’s not like I know what he’s actually up to anyway.” </p><p>Nandor sighs. “You’re jumping to conclusions. Guillermo is off making his own decisions, like a normal adult man. I only want you to pass on a message to him, since he didn’t seem to like it when I appeared on your fire escape.” He crosses the room to the desk and pulls out an honest-to-god quill and parchment.</p><p>“I will be screening it,” Cecil warns. Nandor hisses a little but relents with a shrug. He dashes off a note in admittedly beautiful handwriting, returns the quill to the inkwell, and folds the parchment crisply in half.</p><p>“If you would be so kind,” he orders, holding it out to Cecil.</p><p>“Maybe,” Cecil counters, taking the parchment and shoving it in his jeans pocket. “We’ll see.” He stops. “Wait, did Guillermo tell you where I live?”</p><p>Nandor opens his mouth to answer, but is cut off by Tanya yelling for the two of them to get their butts into the foyer <em>this instant.</em></p><p>*</p><p>They finally get the shot lighting sorted (how are these people constantly acquiring more candles? It defies comprehension) and sit Nadja, Laszlo, Nandor, and Colin down for their first interview. It’s comforting, somehow, to look over and see Ana in her customary position off his right side, headphones on and boom mic held overhead. She gives him a brief grin.</p><p>“You all had a tumultuous winter,” says Rosario. There are tight nods of agreement from the line of vampires. “Could you tell us about that?”</p><p>“Well, it transpired that my former familiar, Guillermo, was actually a seasoned vampire slayer who had spent the winter months leaving a trail of destruction in his wake,” drawls Nandor, crossing one leg over the other and flicking his cape idly out from behind him. Cecil has to admit, it does look very cool. He does wonder how the guy manages to wear an entire cape amid the general swampass of a New York summer, though. “He ran away from our house because he was conflicted about his nature as a vampire slayer who nonetheless desired to become a vampire. However, certain circumstances required him to return in order to…” He fades out.</p><p>“Save our sorry lives from an obvious trap that we were unfortunately gullible enough to walk straight into,” Colin Robinson supplies helpfully.</p><p>Nandor grimaces, showing fangs. “Yes. That is correct.”</p><p>“He rescued you in the Theatre des Vampires, killing a lot of vampires in the process. What happened after that?” Rosario prods. The crew watches with bated breath.</p><p>Nandor stares directly into Cecil’s camera and, by the feel of it, apparently has a rummage around in Cecil’s innermost soul while he’s at it. It is not a comfy sensation. Cecil reassures himself once more that Nandor is the worst hypnotist on the face of the earth. “Guillermo freed us all from our bonds, referred to us ‘a bunch of fucking idiots,’ looked very sadly in my general direction, and then vanished into the night.”</p><p>“Have you seen him since?”</p><p>Nandor’s gaze does not waver. “I have not,” he says slowly. “There are rumors that he is hunting down those who escaped from the Theatre des Vampires that evening. But I personally have no idea of his whereabouts.”</p><p>“And you haven’t made any attempt to contact him, nor he you?”</p><p>Nandor once again returns his gaze to Cecil and enunciates very clearly. “None whatsoever.”</p><p>The rest of the interview continues apace (Nadja has gotten very into the Indigo Girls and Colin Robinson has discovered the joy of paying for a complicated Starbucks order with pocket change during rush hour on Wall Street). Demetrius and Kara tail Laszlo to a Rite Aid, where he loudly holds forth on the pros and cons of every single personal lubricant they have in stock. Meanwhile, Cecil and Ana follow Nandor and Nadja to a contradance in search of virgins, which is a total bust because it turns out that the contradance is just a warmup for the regularly-scheduled orgy afterwards. Dawn comes much earlier than they’re accustomed to; it’s barely five a.m. when Nandor shuts himself into his coffin with a cursory jerk of his chin in Cecil’s direction.</p><p>“Goodnight, Camera Two,” he says tersely as he settles in amid the fur, pulling the lid closed over himself. </p><p>It’s not quite peace, but Cecil is perfectly okay with détente.</p><p>*</p><p>The bodega guy is thrilled to see them. “Back to the documentary about bats?” he asks excitedly, tonging donuts into a box.</p><p>“Yep. Now that it’s summer, they have different sleep/wake patterns,” says Rosario with a great deal of confidence for someone who knows fuck-all about bats.</p><p>“The only reason he didn’t whip out the head-ripping gloves is that he wants me to relay a message,” whispers Cecil to Ana as they pretend to browse the pasta salad. She eyes him over the rim of her coffee cup. “He must think that Guillermo is more likely to listen to me than to him at this point.”</p><p>“Are you going to give Guillermo the message?”</p><p>“Don’t know yet. I haven’t read it.” He pats his pocket to check the parchment is still there.</p><p>“And what exactly makes you the supreme arbiter of vampire-vampire slayer communications?”</p><p>Cecil shrugs. “I’m not a complete psycho, which I never thought was an actual qualification until I met those guys.”</p><p>Ana idly moves on from the pasta salad to the tabbouleh. “Are you seriously trying to get caught in the middle of this?”</p><p>He sighs. “Apparently I am.”</p><p> “There’s only so long you can keep juggling all of your little lies, Cecil. Quarter pound of tabbouleh, please,” she calls across the counter, leaving Cecil to wallow directly in the center of the mushroom cloud left by that little truth-bomb.</p><p>*</p><p>Rick the editor is waiting in the office to receive the dailies (and a box of donut holes). When they troop through the door, dumping gear everywhere and complaining about swampass, he swivels his chair around, steeples his hands, and smiles just a little too knowingly for Cecil’s liking.</p><p>Early in his days of employment with Jemaine Media, Cecil had, for a period, nursed a somewhat pathetic and very unrequited crush on Rick. Never mind that Rick had a husband, a cute little house on Long Island, a pack of Labradors, and a generally very fun and cool existence. Cecil thought that he was hiding his inconvenient, all-consuming longing extremely well, but evidently he is, as a human being, actually kind of shit at hiding things—or Rick is very good at seeing things otherwise kept hidden. Either way, there had been a conversation in the broom closet in which Rick had been understanding and Cecil had simultaneously felt validation and deep, deep shame, and they’d never spoken of it again, though Cecil would still categorize his relationship with Rick as ‘complex at best.’</p><p>The point being, when Rick starts looking like he <em>knows</em> something, Cecil starts worrying.</p><p>“They didn’t have blueberry,” he says apologetically, sliding the box of donut holes onto Rick’s desk.</p><p>“Ah, bummer,” says Rick, popping open the box and peering inside. “Cinnamon,” supplies Cecil.</p><p>“Awesome, thanks,” says Rick, throwing one up in the air and catching it in his mouth. It definitely doesn’t bounce off his cool hipster glasses first.  “How’d filming go?”</p><p>“Same batshit as usual. Warmer, though. And no Guillermo, which felt strange.” Everyone’s running back and forth through the office on their way to pee/smoke/do god knows what. He sinks down on the exercise ball next to the desk and watches Rick deal with the onslaught of memory cards and continuity notes for a moment.</p><p>“Ana and I watched the rough cut on a break last night,” says Cecil cautiously once the frenzy has died down somewhat. He’s reasonably sure that’s the reason for the smirking.</p><p>Rick smiles fondly at him while wiping cinnamon sugar off his glasses, and goddammit the man needs to stop looking like the hip, nerdy, salt-and-pepper-haired high school teacher of everyone’s gay dreams. “And?”</p><p>“You did a great job. Are Rosario and Tanya going to let you keep the part where the disco cult vampires chase me out of their house?”</p><p>Rick shrugs and rattles the donut box at Cecil enquiringly. Cecil takes one and just sort of holds it awkwardly. “I figured I’d make the valiant attempt. Worst can happen is that it gets cut. She let me keep the part where Doug got eaten, after all, even though OSHA had a shit fit about it.”</p><p>This is true. There had been a monstrous amount of paperwork and a highly ineffectual state-mandated grief counsellor, and then Ana had been hired after Rosario discreetly asked around at martial arts clubs if they knew of any sound techs in need of a job. </p><p>“You covered up a lot of my sloppy technique,” Cecil says, stealing another donut hole. He doesn’t know why; now he’s got one in each hand and he doesn’t think he’s capable of eating anything without it coming straight back up.</p><p>“I don’t think anyone cares much about technique when you’re clearly on the verge of getting eaten by vampires,” Rick says gently. “You did great. You and Ana are a wonderful team. Your friendship makes your work so strong.”</p><p>Cecil chokes a little on the donut hole that has finally managed to make its way to his mouth. Receiving compliments is not exactly his strong suit.</p><p>“The other thing I noticed…” says Rick.</p><p>“Shit,” says Cecil softly, which cracks Rick up.</p><p>“It will not be apparent in the finished product, I promise.” Rick holds out his hands, evidently trying to pacify Cecil in advance. “But, in the course of spending weeks and weeks staring at raw footage at all hours of the night, I noticed something.”</p><p>Cecil swallows. “What’s that?”</p><p>“I didn’t even have to look at the metadata to know when you were the one behind the camera. Your footage is very, very distinct from Demetrius’.”</p><p>Cecil wishes fervently that the exercise ball would spontaneously pop and send him into another dimension entirely. Preferably one that doesn’t contain any of this shit.</p><p>“Well, yeah, I’m a lot shorter than Demetrius.” Rick smiles and waits him out. Cecil sighs. “Please, Rick, enlighten me on your trenchant observations.”</p><p>Rick’s eyes crinkle. He is often referred to as “daddy” by the crew, and he mostly just sighs, smiles, and accepts it. Ana will go to her grave insisting that he secretly loves it. “It’s because of the way Guillermo looks at you.”</p><p>“Oh really?” Cecil tries to feign polite puzzlement.</p><p>Rick sighs. “Come on, man.”</p><p>“Right. Well. We certainly, uh, developed a rapport during the shoot. Hard not to, when you spend that much time with someone freezing your ass off and nearly getting eaten. And, I hate to break it to you, Rick, but my job sort of involves looking at Guillermo. I’m not just eye candy for the masses like a certain <em>someone </em>we know.”</p><p>Rick swivels slowly in his chair, steepling his fingers. “But his job doesn’t involve looking back. What did you put in for in the Guillermo-Nandor betting pool, anyway?”</p><p>“I didn’t think it was going to happen. For emotional-stuntedness reasons.” He swallows. Rick scrutinizes.</p><p>“Listen, man,” Rick says at length. “I’m just the lowly editor. I’m not at that house night after night with you all. I don’t see everything that you see. But…seriously, the sheer volume of eyefucking I have had to sift through is <em>unreal.</em>”</p><p>“…who’s eyefucking who?”</p><p>Rick smiles in deep self-satisfaction. “You tell me.”</p><p>“Rick, one does not simply eyefuck while strapped into a Steadicam in a house full of vampires. There are more pressing concerns. Namely not getting eaten.”</p><p>“Okay, bud.” Rick pats his knee.</p><p>Cecil gently but firmly plunks his forehead down on the desk. “All right. Whatever it is, just lay it on me and put me out of my misery.”</p><p>In response, Rick swivels back to his computer and pulls up what looks to be a goddamn folder custom-made for this very occasion. Cecil finds himself praying fervently to a deity he does not actually believe in that this is not what he thinks this is.</p><p>“On company time, Rick, really?” he groans, shoving his face into his hands as the video begins to play.</p><p>“It’s a supercut of all the times Guillermo looked at you through the camera,” says Rick gleefully, because he is a nerd and also a total, total bastard. </p><p>“Stop, stop,” groans Cecil, covering his eyes with one hand and swatting blindly at Rick with the other. “This is a flagrant misuse of your time and talent.”</p><p>“It’s not, actually,” Rick informs him smugly. “I did it for Rosario so she could see them all in one place and decide whether she thought we should include any of them in the final cut.”</p><p>Cecil peeks out from between his fingers. “And?”</p><p>Rick cocks his head at him. Evidently the Labradors are rubbing off on their master. “That new person that you’re sleeping with…”</p><p>Cecil’s stomach drops about three hundred miles into the earth’s crust. “Rick, you can’t—you wouldn’t--”</p><p>Rick holds up his hands in surrender. “I’m not. I won’t. I promise. It’s not like I have proof, anyway. Just…be careful, okay? This has ‘conflict of interest’ written all over it.”</p><p>Cecil groans. “I know. It just sort of…happened. And then…Well. It kept happening.”</p><p>Rick grins and extends his hand out for a fist bump.</p><p>“Pervert,” Cecil sighs, but he pounds it anyway.</p><p>*</p><p>“I’d like to return to something you said to Guillermo when you were applying for your American citizenship,” says Rosario, checking her notes. Nandor, lounging resplendently on the chaise in his crypt, makes an affirming noise in the back of his throat. Cecil and Ana look at each other, which is a Mistake of the Highest Order because they know what’s coming and are consequently on the edge of pissing themselves with laughter. Rosario glares at them, which is fair considering the boom mike is visibly shaking with Ana’s silent mirth. “You mentioned that George Washington was, quote, ‘America’s first gay president.’ Could you elaborate on how you know that?”</p><p>Nandor straightens up and grins, which will never not look goofy on account of the fangs. “Barbados. 1751. The only time that George Washington travelled outside North America.” Behind Cecil, Tanya is frantically alternately Googling and texting Rick, who had pleaded Rosario to ask this very question. “My coffin was aboard a ship bound for Cartagena, but the ship was apparently ambushed by pirates during the daytime. When I awoke that night and burst forth from my coffin, I was surrounded by pirates, who told me that we were going to Barbados instead.” He inspects his fingernails and shrugs. “So I decided to make a vacation of it.”</p><p>“How did you persuade the pirates to let you live?”</p><p>“Oh, this and that,” says Nandor idly.</p><p><em>He fucked them,</em> mouths Ana over Tanya’s head.</p><p>“Okaaaaaaay,” says Rosario slowly, determined to cling to that PG-13 rating for all it’s worth.</p><p>“Anyway,” drawls Nandor, sensing that they’re collectively losing the plot. “We docked in Barbados, where I embarked upon a tropical vacation. It was very nice. True, I could not drink coconut milk nor lie in the sun on the beach, but I made do.” His wistful grin turns to something more predatory. “And then, in Carlyle Bay I met a delectable young man from the undistinguished backwaters of the North American colonies. When I first saw him, I intended to eat him, of course. But then there was something particularly alluring about him…” He locks eyes with Cecil. “So we became lovers, for a short time.”</p><p>“What happened then?”</p><p>“He came down with smallpox and was in no mood to continue our tryst. And then he returned from whence he came, tussled with some French and some Indians, and became the President of the United States.” He shrugs. “The usual.”</p><p>*</p><p>“<em>Please </em>tell me that checks out,” begs Ana as they pile into the van, Tanya still Googling intently.</p><p>“So far, yes,” says Tanya tersely, not looking up from her phone. “I’m emailing Mount Vernon right now.”</p><p>“Got the pool?” Ana asks Cecil, starting to drive before the last intern has flung herself into the van. Cecil rolls his eyes and brings up the betting pool spreadsheet on his phone. “What am I even looking for?” he asks, holding out a hand for the intern to cling to as she takes a running jump into the van and slams the door behind herself. </p><p>“The heading was <em>Nandor fucks his way through history</em>. The subheading was <em>Founding Fathers, </em>and the sub-sub heading was <em>George Washington,</em>” pipes up Demetrius helpfully.</p><p>“Me, Ana, McKenzie, and Rosario.” Cecil taps the appropriate cells and the points auto-calculate.  </p><p>“Standings?” asks Ana, double-parking outside the bodega and putting her hazards on. (She’s one of those people who are of the opinion that you can do anything you want as long as your hazards are on).</p><p>Cecil scrolls. “McKenzie’s in first place, then Rosario, me, Ana, Demetrius and Tanya tied, and then Kara. Dalton, you joined late—” Dalton the new intern grunts from the back of the van—“But you’re holding your own. I mean, you’re still dead last. But you’ve made some very respectable guesses. The thing about the cape fetish was inspired. Disgusting, but inspired nonetheless. Speaking of which…McKenzie, I’m really starting to worry about what your batting average says about you as a person.”</p><p>*</p><p>Cecil has no idea what the metrics are for these sorts of things, but apparently their probationary period of filming is going well. Granted, it’s all of the usual garbage. But on the plus side, no one has gotten hypothermia and it’s actually kind of fun to go dashing through Staten Island in the warm summer nights. Plus, the working days—er, nights—are shorter. Over the next few weeks, Nandor gets into a hilarious, sparkly tussle with some local faeries (an entire afternoon with a Shop-Vac didn’t get even half the glitter out of the van); Laszlo and Nadja find new and terrifying ways to have semi-public sex (Cecil is <em>never </em>getting on the roof of a pit toilet again, journalistic spirit be damned); and Colin Robinson swans around the local beaches handing out pamphlets about the dangers of sun damage, complete with gory photographs of carcinomas (it turns out that trundling through sand while weighed down with camera equipment is bad for morale but great for the calves). It feels comforting to be back in the rhythm: by this point, Cecil has a working knowledge of how these people’s Swiss-cheese minds work and how to wrangle them appropriately. Not a single peep has emerged from Nandor about Guillermo and Cecil, so he even feels like he can marginally relax. He’s also steadily advancing up the leaderboard of the betting pool, not that it matters (it does).</p><p>Cecil and Ana are occasionally summoned by Guillermo to do his mysterious alliance-related bidding, which usually consists of inane tasks like checking if a certain apartment building in Tribeca has a doorman or duct-taping a bag of crucifixes to the eastern wall of a particular Dumpster in Astoria. (That one strikes Cecil as a terrible idea for many reasons, but at least he doesn’t have to climb into the aforementioned Dumpster because he handily defeats Ana at rock-paper-scissors). Less frequently, they’re called upon to deliver messages to werewolves across the city, which is kind of fun except for when it involves the Cross-Bronx Expressway and Ana’s death-wish driving. Cecil knows fuck-all about how well Guillermo’s political machinations are going, but the werewolves are very good at paying Ana back for tolls and are also quite fun to play Dungeons &amp; Dragons with. Between the mitzvahs and the B-roll filming with Ana and Guillermo’s inane cloak-and-dagger errands, Cecil’s is getting to see more of the city than he ever has before. It’s fun. It’s groovy. Everything’s going to be, as Nandor says, OK-A.</p><p>Statistically speaking, everything is far from likely to be OK-A, but Cecil can dream.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s not unusual for Guillermo to appear at Cecil’s apartment completely covered in blood. It’s hardly ever his own, and he always has the decency to strip off on the doormat and drop his clothes into one of the Rite Aid bags Cecil has taken to keeping on the doorknob for this exact purpose. (At one point, the building super showed up to fix the AC unit and, taking note of the bags, accused Cecil of hiding a dog on the premises. Cecil couldn’t very well insist that the bags were not for dog poop but rather for the sexy local vampire hunter to drop his blood-soaked clothes into, so he panicked and declared that he’s stockpiling them before New York City’s bag ban goes into effect because he has a deep-seated plastic-bag kink. In related news, he can no longer make eye contact with the building super.)</p><p>What is unusual, though, is the evening that Guillermo opens the door, drops his key next to Cecil’s on the sideboard, and stands unmoving in the shadows. Cecil is nearly ready to declare it a changeling situation and cower behind the sofa when he realizes that Guillermo isn't moving because he's shaking like a leaf.   </p><p>“Hey, hey, hey,” Cecil soothes frantically, vaulting off the sofa. “C’mere.” He flicks on the table lamp next to the door and gathers Guillermo into his arms. “Are you hurt?”</p><p>Guillermo shakes his head against Cecil’s shoulder and squeezes him tighter. Cecil makes soft, vaguely soothing noises. The smell of blood is rising overwhelming between them, warmed by their combined body heat. Guillermo also smells like something darker, older—moss, the edge of something damp and secret lurking just outside the edge of Cecil’s consciousness.</p><p>“How about some dinner?” he asks into Guillermo’s hair, which is crusted with blood in places. Guillermo shakes his head again, giving Cecil a fresh faceful of miscellaneous gunk in various stages of dryness. He tries really hard not to sneeze (or barf. Cause, y’know. Gross).</p><p>“Can you drink some water for me?” Cecil wheedles gently. “Just a glass. And then we’ll get you cleaned up, hmm? Get you settled in. How about you do that for me?”</p><p>That seems to land decisively in some important part of Guillermo’s brain. He takes a shuddery breath and seems to straighten a bit in Cecil’s arms.</p><p>“Yes,” he says softly. “For you. Please.”</p><p>Oh. <em>Oh. </em>Oh <em>fuck. </em></p><p>“Guillermo,” he says, pulling back to look him in the eyes. He doesn’t like what he sees there: something strange and hunted and wild. “We can only do this if I’m confident you can say no if you need to.”</p><p>“I can say no. I promise,” Guillermo whispers. “Just…” his voice breaks a little. “Tell me what to do. Please. Make me do things. Let me be good.”</p><p>And even though Cecil is worried and confused and sticky with blood of uncertain provenience, that statement threatens to take all the blood out of his brain and deposit it directly someplace not as useful for thinking with. He breathes for a moment, searching frantically for the right tone. “Are you going to behave for me? Are you going to do as I say?”</p><p>Guillermo nods once. “Yes.”</p><p>“Take your clothes off. Can’t have you dripping blood all over the floor.”</p><p>*</p><p>For the first few minutes, Cecil is scared shitless. Sure, they’ve played with this sort of thing before (turns out you don’t get to be a vampire hunter without knowing a thing or two about restraining someone and it turns out that you don’t get to be a gay, millennial Brooklynite without knowing a thing or two about BDSM)—but never in circumstances this emotionally dire. He knows, with a sickening intensity of conviction, he shouldn’t jump into this blind. But there is something dark and pleading in Guillermo’s eyes, and as Cecil undresses him they both seem to relax an infinitesimal amount. Guillermo’s eyes never leave Cecil’s face as he drinks the prescribed glass of water.</p><p>“Well done.” Guillermo shivers a little. Cecil quietly sets the empty glass on the coffee table and draws Guillermo into the bathroom.</p><p>While the shower heats up, Cecil checks Guillermo over for any wounds the adrenaline might be hiding. He’s used to finding bruises on Guillermo, sometimes from slaying but sometimes just because Guillermo is actually kind of a klutz. (See: tripping over the rug in front of the TV so many times that it’s basically ceremonial at this point). It seems that none of tonight’s blood originated from within Guillermo, but Guillermo’s still shaking faintly as Cecil washes him, the blood swirling down the drain. He makes a soft noise and leans into Cecil as his hair is rinsed, and another slightly-less-soft noise as Cecil’s hands stray into more intimate areas.</p><p>“None of that,” cautions Cecil as Guillermo’s own hands start to stray in response. He takes them in his own and gently redirects them to press against the tile. Guillermo whimpers and the line of his shoulders relaxes a little more.</p><p>Once clean, Guillermo stands obediently for Cecil to towel him off, eyes closed. He’s beginning to enjoy the touches more, swaying into Cecil’s hands and coming back into himself little by little.</p><p>“All right. Go lie down and wait for me,” instructs Cecil, hanging the towel back up without looking at Guillermo. Once he hears Guillermo leave, he takes a giant gasp of air and locks eyes with himself in the mirror. <em>Shit. </em>He leans on the sink, trying to puzzle this one out at lightning speed like a sexy, terrifying game of chess whose rules he just learned yesterday. Somewhere around the edges of the panic, though, is a sensation akin to what he felt when he watched Guillermo glow above him in bed that marijuana-hazed night (minus the drugs, which is really a damn shame): the suspicion that he’s brushing the edge of what he, in a more generous mood, might call the divine.</p><p>And then instinct more or less kicks in, because somewhere in the tiny part of his reptilian brain that actually looks out for his best interests, Cecil knows what to do and he understands the <em>want.</em> The rush of power comes all at once, heady and thrilling.<em> Christ, I could get used to this</em>, he thinks. And then he shrugs on his bathrobe and walks into the bedroom.</p><p>*</p><p>Cecil wakes up at four in the morning with a raging need to pee. He’s stumbled into the bathroom and is swaying drowsily in front of the toilet when, unbidden, the memory of the piece of parchment Nandor handed him last week drifts up to the surface of his consciousness. He finishes his business, washes his hands, and pads quietly into the living room.</p><p>He’d stashed the note in what he figured was the last place Guillermo would look, the Tagalog bible that the most religious of his extremely-religious aunts gave him years ago. He teeters precariously on the arm of the recliner and retrieves the Bible from the bookshelf, then moves over to the window and unfolds the letter in a shaft of moonlight.</p><p>
  
</p><p><em>Dearest Guillermo. </em>Cecil swallows.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>I apologize for what I said the other evening. I was taken off-guard. Nadja has informed me recently that when I feel threatened I resort to emasculation of the person who I feel is threatening me, which was a fair judgment on her part. I did have to look up emasculation in the big dictionary upstairs, and then look up several more words that were in the definition. Colin helped me consult a resource known as “The Urban Dictionary.” I hope you appreciate the seriousness of this effort. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I write to you to ask for a meeting. I know that you are forging supernatural alliances across the New World as you come into your powers and I find myself perplexed that you have not yet forged an alliance with Laszlo, Nadja, Colin Robinson, and myself. If you do not remember, we have dominion over our street and also part of Ashley Street. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Also, Guillermo, I do miss you. It pains me greatly to admit this, but my new familiar is not nearly as qualified as you are. She often does things that seem nonsensical but she claims are “for the graham.” Does she perform these rituals in exchange for graham crackers? Are graham crackers delicious? I saw Ana the sound woman feed them to you once, and you seemed to enjoy them. However, Camera Two was also making a rather bawdy joke at the time, so I am unable to be certain about the source of your mirth. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I will be waiting underneath the bridge of fresh kills at one o’ clock in the morning on Friday, June 19<sup>th</sup>, if you so choose to meet. </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Yours, </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Nandor the Relentless</em>
</p><p> </p><p>There’s a telltale floorboard creek in the bedroom. Guillermo must really be off his game; usually he avoids that shit like the plague. Cecil hastily shoves the note back into the Bible and slides the whole sorry affair under a stack of junk mail.</p><p>“Whaddareyoudoing?” Guillermo mumbles sleepily.</p><p>“Just…getting some water,” Cecil says softly. “Everything’s okay, Guillermo. Go back to bed. I’ll be there in a second.”</p><p>Guillermo pads over to where Cecil stands by the window and wraps his arms around Cecil from behind, burying his face in the crook of Cecil’s shoulder. Cecil stares unseeing at the yellow-and-red glowing Chinese restaurant sign across the street, breathing in Guillermo’s scent and feeling a roiling in the pit of his stomach.</p><p>*</p><p>The next day, Cecil goes to film a bat mitzvah at a country club in Paramus. It’s just about the last thing he wants to be doing right now: he’s running on fumes, there’s a massive crick in his neck, some kid spills orange soda on his pants while he’s rolling, and the chocolate fountain sputters out halfway through the evening. The day after that, he drags himself through two back-to-back mitzvahs; he’s slinking out the door after #2 with the Cha-Cha Slide ringing in his ears when his stills photographer waylays him and ropes him into being second shooter for a wedding the following night. That wedding runs late because it turns out that both grooms have side pieces who gate-crash the ceremony; Cecil watches the chaos from the comfort of the chocolate fountain and mourns the fact that he’s not getting paid by the hour. Mitzvah by mitzvah, wedding by wedding, Friday draws closer. Nandor’s letter is still wedged in the Bible, which has been relegated to the bottom of the box containing Cecil’s winter clothes. Cecil doesn’t have Guillermo pegged for the type to go rummaging, but if he’s learned anything over the last few years, it’s that the supernatural works in freaky-ass ways.</p><p>*</p><p>Ana has the unnerving tendency to be annoyingly prescient at the exact moments that Cecil doesn’t want her to be.</p><p>“Does Guillermo seriously not know about this?” she asks in an undertone one evening. They’re sitting close to each other on the vampires’ couch, rain lashing the windows outside. Demetrius and Kara have drawn either the short or long straw, depending on how you see it, and are off in a nightclub somewhere watching Nadja, Laszlo, and Nandor getting absolutely trollied on drug blood. Ana and Cecil, meanwhile, have been left at the mercy of Colin Robinson, who has decided to enlighten them on the precise process by which chicken becomes a nugget.</p><p>Cecil shrugs. “He hasn’t said anything.” He casts a glance over to the loveseat, where Rosario and McKenzie are both fully asleep and snoring loudly.</p><p>“But he must notice you disappearing all night every so often.” Ana loses focus for a moment as Colin Robinson draws her in with discussion of the evolution of chicken nugget shapes through time. She shakes herself and returns to the matter at hand. “What are you telling him you’re doing?”<br/>
 Cecil shrugs. “That I won’t be home but he’s welcome to raid the fridge.”</p><p>“And he buys that?”</p><p>“We have a mutual policy of not scrutinizing things too closely. He’s the one who consistently shows up covered in blood, ectoplasm, and what I suspect is hummus, and I never ask.”</p><p>“Sounds extremely healthy,” Ana murmurs. McKenzie unleashes a particularly startled-sounding snore and they both jump. Ana lowers her voice even further. “I already know the answer to this one, but humor me. You two haven’t had any sort of conversation about the exact nature of your relationship, have you?”</p><p>Cecil squirms. “Not as such, no.”</p><p>“And you, Cecil, are increasingly emotionally invested in whatever messed-up sweet little world the two of you are dwelling in?”</p><p>“That would be correct. Yes.”</p><p>“And do you see the problem here?”</p><p>He plays with a throw-pillow tassel. “Possibly.”</p><p>Colin, sensing their distraction, turns the volume up a notch and launches into a detailed explanation of refrigerated semi trucks.</p><p>“<em>Boys,</em>” grumbles Ana in despair, slumping back into the cushions and surrendering to the drain.</p><p>*</p><p>“Come to Coney Island with me today?” Guillermo asks Cecil drowsily on Thursday morning. The sunlight is filtering through the gauzy curtains and shimmering warm like water on the walls.</p><p>“I feel like this is a trap,” murmurs Cecil into Guillermo’s shoulder. It lacks bite, though.</p><p>“It’s definitely a trap,” says Guillermo. “But, hey, it’s a trap that comes with funnel cake.”</p><p>It’s not a terrible argument, all things considered. “Why do you need <em>me</em> there?”</p><p>Guillermo props himself up on his elbows. He never made it back into his t-shirt last night, there’s a giant love bite on his shoulder, and his hair is a riot of curls. Cecil has never felt fonder. “Moral support.”</p><p>“Is anyone going to get staked?”</p><p>Guillermo snorts. “Yes, Cecil. I’m going to ambush some fearsome vampires who are sleeping off a night of debauchery in the Tilt-A-Whirl. You’re going to be the live bait.”</p><p>“Hey, this is your world, not mine. It’s not outside the realm of possibility. Also, rude.”</p><p>“You’re right. Very rude. How careless of me. How can I make it up to you?”</p><p>“I have a few ideas…”</p><p>*</p><p>They take the subway to Coney Island. Cecil optimistically brings a picnic basket and swimming trunks, although he has no delusions about whether this is a work trip. Guillermo insists that Cecil and the picnic basket take the final open seat in the subway car and hangs onto the pole himself, gazing out the window behind Cecil’s head.</p><p>“Did you grow up in the Bronx?” Cecil asks, surprising even himself. This conversation seems like it would very much fall into the category of Things We Do Not Talk About, but he’s wearing swim trunks and a possibly-stupid hat and feeling a little bit giddy.</p><p>“More or less.” Guillermo’s eyes follow the line of rooftops of Brooklyn’s outer reaches as they speed past. “Moved around from apartment to apartment, you know. Some in the projects, some not. My mom cleans houses for a living and the work wasn’t always steady. We lived with relatives sometimes.” He looks at Cecil curiously. “What about you? I can’t believe I don’t know whether you grew up in the city.”</p><p>“Forest Hills, in Queens. Filipino central. Mostly raised by my aunts,” Cecil says. “Went to college at SUNY Binghamton. It sucked. I moved back to the city the second I graduated and picked up some work with Jemaine shortly after that. At one point Tanya and I worked together on a piece about the ethics of pug breeding—humans keep loading them down with horrific health problems in the name of cuteness, you know how it is—and it went over well enough that I got hired full-time.”</p><p>Guillermo squints at him. “Wait, you went from being an expert on horribly-misbred dogs to being an expert on vampires?”</p><p>Cecil smirks. “There’s relatively little difference between them when you dig down into it.”</p><p>Guillermo rolls his eyes, but Cecil notes that he doesn’t argue.</p><p>*</p><p>“We’re early,” says Guillermo as they sidle through the subway turnstiles into the crowd of holidaymakers. “What do you want to do?”</p><p>“I refuse to believe you don’t have a plan.”</p><p>Guillermo looks sheepish. “The plan starts at 9 p.m. It’s only 6. The plan was to give us some time. To, uh. Be normal and stuff.” He grimaces as if he’s not entirely sure those words belong in his mouth.</p><p>Cecil finds himself standing stock still in a sea of grumpy Italian grandparents and grinning in spite of himself (and in spite of the fact that the grandmas are definitely whacking him with their handbags on purpose). “All right. As per usual, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth. Where to first?”</p><p>Eight o’clock finds them laying on the beach in the evening light, eating sandwiches and watching families pack up their umbrellas and picnic baskets to head out for the night. The waves are crashing, the seagulls are shrieking, and Cecil has definitely acquired a wicked farmer’s tan. </p><p>Guillermo still looks a little uneasy.</p><p>“This is the last place vampires are going to turn up,” says Cecil, half-sitting up to rub Guillermo’s back comfortingly. “If they make it through the sunset, the cotton-candy-and-hotdog miasma will do them in.”</p><p>“You never know about daywalkers. Once I saw Colin Robinson on this beach handing out his carcinoma pamphlets.” </p><p>Cecil takes a moment to blindly panic about the possibility that Guillermo has seen him and Ana running after Colin Robinson with a camera on the aforementioned excursions. Then he decides/hopes that Guillermo would’ve said something if that were the case and returns to the matter at hand.</p><p>“Okay, since you’re already on edge anyway…would you care to tell me about what happened the other night?”</p><p>Guillermo looks out over the beach to where kids are shoving each other into the surf and bashing each other over the head with boogie boards.</p><p>“Which night do you mean?”</p><p>“The one where you showed up at my apartment completely distraught and I could only bring you back down by dominating the shit out of you.”</p><p>“Minor existential crisis,” Guillermo mumbles, throwing a Wheat Thin at a seagull.</p><p>“About…?”</p><p>Guillermo squints off into the waves. “You were raised Catholic. You know.”</p><p>Cecil points upwards. “Sky Dad?”</p><p>Guillermo snorts. “Yes, Sky Dad. And his entourage. And where they fit into all of this.”</p><p>“…into the vampire-slaying thing or into the frequent-gay-sex thing?”</p><p>“Let’s go with both.”</p><p>“I see.” He puts the last of his sandwich back in the baggie. “Do you want to talk about it?”</p><p>Guillermo is still staring at the ocean and worrying at the edge of the beach blanket with his fingertips. Unless he thinks there’s something novel about a bunch of middle-schoolers being complete and utter shitheads, it’s clearly an avoidance tactic. “Not really, no.”</p><p>“Did something happen?”</p><p>Guillermo abandons the edge of the picnic blanket and starts tracing patterns in the sand with a fingertip. “It can’t have escaped your notice that vampires’ aversion to holy items basically confirms the validity of Christian theology.”</p><p>“Does it, though?”</p><p>Guillermo finally wrests his gaze away from the youthful fucknuts at the water’s edge and stares at Cecil. “…yes?”</p><p>“It confirms that vampires are averse to a set of items loosely joined by a common ideology. It doesn’t confirm that that ideology is objectively correct, nor does it confirm that that ideology is objectively good. I’m allergic to pollen. That doesn’t mean I’m good and—actually, wait. Pollen <em>is </em>the devil. Bad example.” He chucks a stray pretzel at a seagull for emphasis. “You get my point, though, don’t you? Just because two things are in opposition doesn’t mean one has to be good and one has to be evil.”</p><p>Guillermo nods curtly.</p><p>“Really, does pegging Nandor the Relentless in the head with a clove of garlic prove anything about the existence of God? Or does it just prove that garlic gives vampires road rash?”</p><p>“…I’ve never used garlic on a vampire.”  </p><p>“<em>Seriously?</em> You’ve never passed by a Trader Joe’s on the way to do some slaying and were like ‘you know what? I’ll grab some bruschetta and give it a whirl?’” Cecil shakes his head in disbelief. “I think my vampire-slaying style would be vastly different than yours.” Guillermo snorts, but it tails off into a whine and he snuggles into Cecil’s chest.</p><p>“Correlation doesn’t equal causation,” murmurs Cecil into Guillermo’s hair. “Don’t jump to conclusions.”</p><p>Guillermo snorts. “Nerd.”</p><p>“SUNY didn’t do me all that dirty, you know.” For a moment they just lay there, listening to the pterodactyl screeches of the seagulls and the waves crashing on the shore.</p><p>When Guillermo speaks again, it’s almost plaintive. “I don’t know where I fit. I seem to be destined to slay vampires and exist on the side of the light, but I want more than anything to be a vampire and be in the world of darkness. And then there’s the fact that I’m apparently a horrendous sinner for…well…” He gestures expansively at Cecil, who winks lasciviously and wiggles his hips because he’s mature like that. “And then I started glowing. Like a saint. During drug-fueled gay sex. Which is not very saintly, last time I checked.”</p><p>“Yeah, I clocked that one as odd too. But I sort of had other things on my mind at that moment. Namely the drug-fueled gay sex.”</p><p>“Really, Cecil? We were potentially touching the edge of the divine and you were hung up on the gay sex?”</p><p>Cecil swats him. “Do you want to tell me what actually happened the other night, or are you content to keep slut-shaming me?”</p><p>Guillermo leans over and checks Cecil’s watch. “It’s 8:50. We have to get a wiggle on.”</p><p>Cecil sighs. “Come on, man.”</p><p>Guillermo shakes his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”</p><p>Cecil takes that as his cue to extrapolate wildly (but probably fairly accurately, all things considered). “Something happened that made you come to me to have control taken out of your hands. To let you feel as if you could be good, even on a miniscule scale…to keep you back from some sort of edge. Because…something made you feel as if you’re not good.” Cecil flops down onto his back.</p><p>“Wouldn’t you have done the same in my position?” Guillermo rebuts, flopping down with him. “You know what it’s like, the guilt and the worry.”</p><p>“I am not in your position. Because, as everyone feels they need to consistently remind me, I’m just an unremarkable human toting a camera around Brooklyn.” He clambers to his feet and holds his hand out. Guillermo takes it and allows Cecil to help him up. “Funnel cake?” asks Cecil hopefully.</p><p>“No time. Places to be, people to see.”</p><p>*</p><p>Guillermo gets markedly edgier as they pack up the picnic basket. Cecil puts his pants back on, strongly suspecting that whatever’s coming, he doesn’t want to face it in his swim trunks. (They have turtles on them and are unlikely to intimidate anyone.) Once they’ve got their shit sorted, Guillermo leads him down the beach to a fishing pier and holds out a hand for Cecil to follow him as he slips into the shadows underneath.</p><p>They pick their way around used condoms and sun-bleached Doritos bags until they’re right at the water’s edge. “Shhh,” says Guillermo completely unnecessarily, as if Cecil had any inclination whatsoever to make small talk about the possibility of stepping on a syringe. (Listen, Cecil’s a lifetime New Yorker. He’s an authority on the fact that the city is objectively nasty).</p><p>Guillermo kneels, narrowly missing a sneaker tangled in kelp, and checks his watch. “We totally had time to stop for funnel cake,” he sighs, sitting back on his haunches. Cecil shifts awkwardly on his feet and watches the waves come in in the blue light of early night.</p><p>“Listen, this may be not a great time for this,” he ventures. “But when we’re in my apartment, we get…uh. Distracted.”</p><p>Guillermo grins a little. “<em>Yeah</em> we do.”</p><p>“No, I—shut up, you flaming <em>dork. </em>Listen. I do need to know—for my own sake, but I suspect also yours—“ He scuffs at a desiccated stuffed rabbit with his shoe. “What exactly I am to you.”</p><p>Guillermo stops peering at the dark water to peer up at Cecil. “Sorry?”</p><p>“Are we…together? Potentially going to be together someday? Or is it something casual? I won’t be angry either way, I just need to know. For my own sanity. Also because Ana told me so and I’m beginning to suspect that she’s right.”</p><p>Guillermo eyes him. “How much exactly does Ana…?”</p><p>“That’s not the point. Also, she’s very persuasive and I’m not responsible for anything I say to her while under the influence—is that a <em>fucking mermaid Guillermo holy crap—”</em></p><p>The mermaid in question—who is best described what would result if a cast member of <em>The Jersey Shore</em> got it on with a mackerel—eyes him dubiously, tail casually flicking the sand. “Yo. Lovers’ spat?”</p><p>Both Guillermo and Cecil turn beet red.         </p><p>“Funny you should mention that, actually, considering…”</p><p>“You were just trying to DTR when I swam up.”</p><p>“Er…”</p><p>“Define the Relationship. It’s a classic human thing to do. You can’t just be happy enjoying each other for what you are, you have to go and put words on it and give everybody a complex.” The newcomer raises his eyebrows accusingly at Cecil.</p><p>Cecil splutters. “Mate, I’m just here for moral support. He’s your guy.” He shamelessly points at Guillermo, who has half-risen to his feet. The mermaid—mer<em>man? merperson? </em>Cecil has no fucking clue—snickers and pulls himself further up on his forearms.</p><p>“Yeah, I know, man. I’m just messing with you.”</p><p>“Also, I’m sorry, but is that a New Jersey accent?” Cecil asks, beating a hasty retreat even as the words are still leaving his mouth. Guillermo swats him.</p><p>“We have important business to discuss, Sherman,” continues Guillermo, glaring daggers at Cecil.</p><p>“You’re a vampire killer. I know. You think that’s news? The tristate area can’t stop talking about it. It’s been blowing up the New Jersey Mermen Crossfit Association’s Facebook page. The rich assholes up in Connecticut seem to think it’s some sort of hoax, but they also believe in trickle-down economics, so we can pretty much discount anything they say. Jeez, get with the times.” The merman turns to Cecil, various naked-lady tattoos rippling across his torso as he does.</p><p>“And who are you, bro? I mean, other than the human that Guillermo’s feeling really conflicted about banging.”</p><p>Cecil and Guillermo splutter in unison. The merman looks unimpressed.</p><p>“I’m…Cecil.” Cecil holds his hand out tentatively. The merman shakes it; he’s surprisingly not-pruney for someone who lives in the water. “I’m a videographer. When I’m not on beaches shaking hands with merpeople, that is.”</p><p>Sherman eyes him. “Do you do quinceañeras? My niece has one coming up.”</p><p>“I don’t have a waterproof camera,” says Cecil faintly, as if <em>that’s</em> the limiting factor here. Sherman snorts, crosses his arms across his chest, and turns back to Guillermo</p><p>“Anyway, bro. What can I do for you?”</p><p>“I received an invitation,” says Guillermo, and he leans closer as if afraid Cecil will overhear. “From Tommy.”</p><p>“Oh yeah. Tommy! What a guy. Yeah, he was interested in you because, if I’m going to be totally honest, the vampires in Bay Ridge were baiting us out of the water with Powerbars and it was <em>working.</em> We lost a couple of good guys that way. So when we heard you were taking them down, we were naturally interested.”</p><p>“Mmmhmm,” rumbles Guillermo slowly, crossing his arms across his chest, and dammit if Cecil doesn’t have a Major Thing for when Guillermo gets all Shark-Tanky. He sits down on the sand just in case his blood starts to decide it has better places to be than his brain. “What sorts of things were you interested in?”</p><p>“Protection, for a start. We’re sort of sitting ducks because of the whole ‘can’t leave the water for too long without drying up’ thing.”</p><p>“But vampires have a whole ‘can’t step out into daylight without burning themselves to a crisp’ thing,” Cecil interjects.</p><p>“I like him, he’s sassy,” says Sherman to Guillermo. “Pity you’ve still got it so bad for that…what’s his face? Norman? Nimrod? Nancy? That hunky Middle Eastern one with the accent and the capes and the swords.”</p><p>“Right. Okay. That’s my cue to leave.” Cecil stands up and brushes sand off his ass. “You two have fun.” He’s gone before either of them has time to blink.</p><p>He’s definitely not crying on the long walk home. The lights of Coney Island are just extra blurry tonight and the pollen count is probably totally off the charts.</p><p>When he gets back to his apartment, he lets himself in the front door and stands there in the darkness for a moment. A sick feeling floods him and he looks at his watch. 10:30 p.m. <em>Dearest Guillermo…at the bridge of fresh kills at one in the morning…Yours. </em>He steels himself for a moment, then grabs his camera bag off the back of the door, shoves a bunch of stakes from the wine rack into it, and takes off into the night.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>that's all, folks! obviously there will be another installment, but this is where I've deviously chosen to leave things for now. Tune in next time for a solstice party, sage advice from Lilith, and Ana dropping from a tree like a ninja.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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